Development of the Perceived Maternal Narcissism Scale

Abstract

A mother's pathological narcissistic traits can lead to several adverse childhood experiences. However, there is no measurement tool to assess these detrimental effects of maternal narcissism on the child's perception. The current study aims to develop and examine the psychometric properties of the Perceived Maternal Narcissism Scale (PMNS). In this article, we conducted three studies with 720 participants. In studies 1 and 2, we developed PMNS and evaluated its reliability and validity. Both exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis results provided evidence for 23 items and a five-factor solution (lack of empathy, grandiosity, criticism, control-manipulation, and parentification-exploitation) to assess maternal narcissism from the child's perception. Moreover, PMNS scores were significantly associated with parental attitudes and parentification measures. The PMNS demonstrated good reliability in terms of internal consistency and test-retest reliability. Finally, study 3 obtained the PMNS scores from children associated with obtained Narcissistic Personality Inventory-16 and the Pathological Narcissism Inventory scores from their mothers. The results of three studies have shown that the PMNS is a valid and reliable measurement tool to assess mothers’ narcissistic traits from the children’ perception.