SynthesisJournal of personality2025
A Farewell to the Narcissism Epidemic? A Cross-Temporal Meta-Analysis of Global NPI Scores (1982-2023).
Synthesis in Journal of personality, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Pathological Narcissism and Psychological Distress Among University Students: The Interplay of Family Dynamics, Trauma, and Health-Related Factors.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- How team leader narcissism influences team task performance: the mechanisms of team identification, team member narcissism and task initiative.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
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Abstract
objectiveSeveral recent accounts have failed to replicate the so-called Narcissism Epidemic, suggesting potential influences of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) in 2008 as a reason for narcissism trend reversals. Here, we provide evidence for narcissism test score changes from 1982 to 2023.
methodsWe investigated self-report data on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) from 1105 studies (k = 1621, N = 546,225) using precision-weighted cross-temporal meta-analysis.
resultsData collection years were meaningfully negatively associated with narcissism scores in virtually all analyses (bs: -0.409 to -0.008; partial eta square's: < 0.001 to 0.118; ps: < 0.001 to 0.174), thus indicating cross-temporally decreasing narcissism self-report scores. Examination of regression segments pre- and post-dating the GFC and segmented line regressions indicated mostly stable narcissism scores during the 1980s and 1990s that subsequently showed negative slopes with somewhat differing decreases onsets according to analytical subsets.
conclusionsHere, we provide evidence for negative cross-temporal changes in narcissism from 1982 to 2023 globally, thus contrasting the idea of a Narcissism Epidemic having taken place at any point during the past four decades. Changes appear to generalize across different regions and participant sex, although mean scores were differentiated, yielding higher narcissism values for North American and younger samples.
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