One study found that people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are ten times more likely to suffer from narcissism.
That’s the finding of a team of eight psychologists who analysed 164 adults with ADHD and investigated the link between this attention-deficit disorder and a condition medically known as “narcissistic personality disorder” (NPD).
The team concluded that people with ADHD are 10 times more likely to suffer from narcissism than the general population, where the incidence is just 1%.
Psychologists who discovered this apparent link have proposed one theory that it arises from an early childhood association between ADHD and a kind of impulsive overconfidence that is thought to manifest as a “defense mechanism.”
A new study analyzed 164 adults with ADHD and looked at the relationship between the disorder and a condition known clinically as “narcissistic personality disorder” (NPD). About 9.5 percent of those with ADHD in the study also had NPD.
This tendency, known clinically as “positive illusory bias” (PIB) in children, is linked to deficits in the brain’s frontal lobes that affect executive function and limit “pragmatic language,” the researchers reported.
By comparison, about 9.5% of people with ADHD studied also had NPD.
But people who fear the charismatic charm and manipulative skills that the image of a narcissist conjures up in the public mind may be surprised to learn that people diagnosed with narcissism may pose an even greater threat to themselves, the researchers noted.
The study’s authors, psychologists from France, Switzerland and the UK, found that two sets of ADHD symptoms were most closely associated with narcissism.
These are the “hyperactivity” and “impulsivity” characteristics of ADHD – high energy and acting quickly without thinking.
“These aspects of narcissism are also associated with several aspects of psychosocial dysfunction, including anxiety, depression, negative urgency, impulsivity, and reduced quality of life,” the authors write.
Their research found that so-called “inattention symptoms,” or simply the inability to pay attention, had no strong relationship to narcissism.
The mean age of the adults with ADHD in the study was 36.5 years, and there was a high female prevalence: 63.4%, or 104 out of 164, were women.
The research team suspected that the association between narcissism and ADHD would have been even stronger if the pool of patient data had been more evenly split between men and women.
To be eligible for the study, all subjects had to be over 18 years old, had a reliable diagnosis of ADHD, and provided “informed consent to participate.”
“Research has found that men score higher on narcissistic grandiosity than women, yet are just as vulnerable,” concludes a new study published in June this year. Journal of Psychiatry Research.
“If the gender distribution in our sample had been more balanced, the prevalence of NPD may have been higher,” the researchers said.
The researchers looked for narcissistic traits in those with ADHD using a version of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI), a self-report questionnaire that has been validated in various versions since 1979.
They also used a more modern self-report questionnaire, the Pathological Narcissism Inventory (PNI).
The PNI lists seven dimensions of narcissistic behavior, including a tendency to exploit others, “delusions of grandeur,” self-sacrifice to enhance oneself (e.g., eating disorders to lose weight), self-esteem issues, devaluation, and ““The rage of a sense of entitlement” and hiding one’s true self.
The researchers noted that these seven behaviors help categorize narcissists into two thematic categories:A vicious cycle of “narcissistic grandiosity,” self-loathing, self-denial, and aggression from “narcissistic vulnerability.”
Previous studies have linked vulnerable narcissism to low self-esteem and life satisfaction, and reported that “grandiose narcissism appears to be similar to psychopathy.”
You may know someone who frequently posts selfies to Instagram, and they may be experiencing “vulnerable narcissism.”
However, the researchers acknowledged that their findings were further clouded by gender bias in the patient population.
“Women are more likely to be diagnosed with borderline personality disorder and histrionic personality disorder,” the psychologist points out, “and these considerations may explain the higher prevalence of BPD.” [borderline personality disorder].
The researchers noted that overlapping symptoms between BPD and the distressed self-esteem associated with narcissistic vulnerability may also have skewed the findings, suggesting the link between ADHD and narcissism is stronger than it really is.
“We caution readers not to draw too many conclusions about whether our findings can be generalized to the entire population of people with ADHD,” the researchers wrote.
“However, considering that there is little research on narcissism in ADHD, we believe that our findings may be of interest,” the researchers added.
