Concept Creep of Collective Narcissism

Abstract

Collective narcissism refers to overvaluing the group with which one identifies. In a widely circulated and attention-grabbing paper, Putnam and colleagues (2018) measured collective narcissism by asking people how much their state in the U.S.A. contributed to the nation’s history. This led to some media reports proclaiming that the U.S.A. is “a nation of narcissists.” We demonstrated here (valid N = 539) that Putnam’s operationalization of collective narcissism had a small correlation (r = .18) with a traditional individual difference measure of collective narcissism, falling short of typical benchmarks for convergent validity. These results call into question whether collective narcissism can be measured as Putnam did. In the end, this empirical investigation has implications for “concept creep.” Measures that lack convergent validity but use the same label (in this case, “collective narcissism”) not only create confusion, but also increase the chances of unfounded yet highly publicized claims. In this case, the meaning of the new measure does not adequately reflect the meaning of the original construct—implicating concept creep of collective narcissism.