Free Narcissistic Personality Disorder Quiz (NPD)

Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) is a personality disorder defined by a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration and lack of empathy that begins by early adulthood (APA, 2022). This free 15-question quiz looks at those traits, either in yourself or in someone close to you. It is a self-assessment, not a diagnosis.

Most people who visit this page are not worried about themselves. They are here because of someone else — a parent who made everything about them, a partner whose warmth turned into contempt, a colleague whose confidence quietly became cruelty. Something in a relationship felt wrong, again and again. They want words for it and a way to make sense of it.

A smaller group comes here to question themselves. Perhaps someone close made a comment that landed differently, or certain relationship patterns keep repeating without a clear explanation. This kind of self-examination — especially for a condition as ego-syntonic as NPD — takes genuine courage.

This free Narcissistic Personality Disorder Quiz screens for both the grandiose and covert presentations of NPD using all nine DSM-5-TR diagnostic criteria (APA, 2022). 15 questions. Screens for the person in your life or for yourself. Instant, private results.

What Is Narcissistic Personality Disorder?

Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) is a Cluster B personality disorder (ICD-10-CM code F60.81). Cluster B is the “dramatic, emotional, or erratic” group. It also includes Borderline, Histrionic, and Antisocial Personality Disorders. The DSM-5-TR defines NPD as a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and lack of empathy. It begins by early adulthood and shows up across many areas of life (APA, 2022).

Prevalence estimates range from 0.5–5% of the general U.S. population (Rosenthal et al., 2020, cited in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 2024), with clinical literature typically citing 1–2% (APA, 2022). About 75% of those diagnosed are male. But the APA and researchers note this likely reflects bias in diagnosis as much as real sex differences. Covert NPD is more common in women, and it is often missed or mislabeled (APA, 2022).

In 2025, Gori and Topino (Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy, 2025) ran a network analysis of the DSM-5-TR NPD criteria with 376 mental health professionals. They found that “need for admiration” was the most central criterion in the network, more central than grandiosity itself. The analysis also identified two distinct symptom clusters in NPD: a self-dimension (grandiosity, fantasies, specialness, entitlement) and an interpersonal dimension (exploitation, empathy deficit, envy, arrogance). Across both, the central trait was antagonism: a tendency to be at odds with other people that runs through every form of NPD.

The DSM-5-TR diagnostic criteria for NPD — requiring at least 5 of the following 9 (APA, 2022):

• Criterion 1. A grandiose sense of self-importance — exaggerating achievements and talents, expecting to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements.
• Criterion 2. Preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love.
• Criterion 3. Believes they are “special” and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other high-status people or institutions.
• Criterion 4. Requires excessive admiration.
• Criterion 5. Has a sense of entitlement — unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance.
• Criterion 6. Interpersonally exploitative — takes advantage of others to achieve their own ends.
• Criterion 7. Lacks empathy — unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others.
• Criterion 8. Often envious of others or believes that others are envious of them.
• Criterion 9. Shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes.

An important clinical note: the DSM-5-TR Section II criteria primarily describe the grandiose presentation of NPD. The APA’s own Section III Alternative Model of Personality Disorders recognizes that these criteria miss much of the vulnerable or covert subtype. That subtype looks different on the surface but shares the same core dynamics (APA, 2022; Caligor, Levy & Clarkin, 2015).

Signs You Might Be Dealing With a Narcissist (Or Recognizing It in Yourself)

NPD is often misread. The grandiose version seems obvious looking back, but it can be convincing in the moment. The covert version is almost invisible until you know the pattern. These are the signs that most reliably indicate NPD, across both subtypes.

The relationship revolves around them — consistently and systematically. Not occasionally, as happens in any relationship when someone needs support. Consistently. Every significant conversation eventually returns to their concerns, their feelings, their narrative. Your needs, your experiences, and your emotional states are acknowledged briefly, if at all, and then redirected. Over time, you may start editing your own experiences before you share them. You expect them not to land, not to matter, or to somehow circle back to being about them.

Admiration is required, not appreciated. Most people enjoy recognition and compliments. Someone with NPD requires them in a way that is qualitatively different — as fuel, not pleasure. When admiration is withheld or simply absent, the response is not disappointment but something more like deprivation. Gori and Topino (2025) found the need for admiration to be the most central NPD criterion. It is not a preference. The person’s self-image depends on it.

Empathy is selectively absent in the specific moments it would cost them something. People with NPD can often tell what someone else is feeling. What they cannot consistently do is allow that knowledge to outweigh their own needs when the two conflict. So the empathy gap in NPD is not always a failure to understand how others feel. It is a failure to let those feelings matter when that would be inconvenient.

Criticism — however gentle or well-intentioned — produces a disproportionate response. What the APA describes as “narcissistic injury” is the specific, intense response to perceived criticism, slights, or challenges to the self-image. In grandiose NPD, this looks like rage, contempt, or counterattack. In covert NPD, it looks like extended withdrawal, sulking, passive aggression, or a hurt silence that subtly communicates that you have done something wrong. Both are responses to the same underlying wound — a fragile self-esteem that the grandiosity exists to protect.

They exploit relationships without awareness — or without concern. Not all exploitation in NPD is calculated. Much of it is a simple absence of the consideration that most people apply automatically: “What does this cost the other person?” The exploitation in NPD criterion 6 is often not malicious. It comes from a basic outlook in which other people exist mainly to serve one’s own needs and goals.

Rules, norms, and reciprocity apply to others — not to them. The entitlement in NPD (criterion 5) produces a specific orientation toward social rules: they apply to other people. Waiting in line, following social norms, returning favors, keeping commitments: these are for the people around them. Their sense of being special exempts them from the ordinary rules everyone else follows.

In covert NPD specifically: they seem wounded, not powerful. The covert narcissist does not brag openly. Instead, they seem chronically misunderstood, perpetually overlooked, unfairly treated by a world that fails to recognize their special qualities. They are hypersensitive to perceived slights. They may appear shy, modest, or self-deprecating while privately feeling superior and resentful. Even gentle criticism can feel like an attack and may produce days of wounded withdrawal. The underlying grandiosity is present — it simply manifests as an entitlement to being understood, recognized, and never criticized, rather than as overt boastfulness.

The relationship history shows a pattern. NPD doesn’t produce isolated incidents — it produces a pattern across relationships and over time. Former friends, former partners, former colleagues who were initially close and then became targets of contempt or dismissal. A history of relationships that began with intense idealization and ended in devaluation. The pattern is not about specific circumstances — it is about the consistent dynamics that the person’s personality produces wherever they go.

Grandiose NPD vs Covert (Vulnerable) NPD — The Distinction That Changes Everything

This distinction matters most if you are trying to make sense of someone in your life who doesn’t fit the obvious, boastful stereotype.

Both subtypes share the same core: inflated self-importance, fragile self-esteem that depends on others, a lack of real empathy when empathy costs something, and a lasting need for validation and admiration. The difference is in how these features show up. As Caligor, Levy, and Clarkin (2015) put it, people with NPD “may be grandiose or self-loathing, extraverted or socially isolated, captains of industry or unable to maintain steady employment.” All of these fit the same diagnosis.

Many people with NPD move between grandiose and vulnerable states depending on circumstance. Periods of success activate overt grandiosity; setbacks, losses, or perceived slights activate the covert, withdrawn, wounded presentation. Both states belong to the same person and reflect the same underlying structure.

The Maladaptive Covert Narcissism Scale (MCNS)

Many readers come here asking about covert narcissism. They may be looking for a covert narcissist quiz, the Maladaptive Covert Narcissism Scale, a vulnerable narcissist test, or a test for covert narcissism in women. This section covers it in detail.

The Maladaptive Covert Narcissism Scale (MCNS) was developed by Dr. Jonathan M. Cheek, Harvey M. Hendin, and Paul Wink at Wellesley College in 2013. It is a 23-item self-report scale built to measure covert (vulnerable) narcissistic traits. This is the hypersensitive, shame-prone, socially withdrawn form of narcissism. The standard DSM Section II criteria and the widely used Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) tend to miss it.

The MCNS has a reliability (Cronbach’s alpha) of .89 (Cheek, Hendin & Wink, 2013, N=420, with replication in N=182 college women). That is well above the earlier Hypersensitive Narcissism Scale (HSNS; alpha=.75). It correlates .65 with the MMPI composite measure of covert narcissism and shows strong construct validity across multiple samples (Cheek et al., 2013).

The MCNS measures these features (Cheek et al., 2013; Miller et al., 2012):

• a need for outside validation and admiration
• high introversion
• hypersensitivity to perceived criticism, humiliation, neglect, or belittlement
• sensitivity to shame
• social withdrawal
• trouble regulating emotions
• a tendency toward conflict with others, despite a humble surface
• a lasting sense of being overlooked or undervalued by a world that doesn’t see one’s special qualities

This quiz covers the grandiose criteria from the DSM-5-TR. It also covers covert narcissism, with questions on the themes the MCNS measures. The dedicated Covert Narcissism Test provides a more focused assessment of this specific profile.

What Causes Narcissistic Personality Disorder?

NPD develops from an interaction of developmental, relational, and possibly neurobiological factors. No single cause has been established, but several contributing pathways have consistent research support.

Developmental origins — two distinct pathways. Research and clinical experience point to two main paths to NPD from childhood. In the first, a child gets constant, unconditional praise that has nothing to do with what they actually do or achieve. This builds an inflated self-image that needs constant outside validation to hold up. In the second, a child faces serious emotional neglect, humiliation, or criticism. Grandiosity grows as a defense against deep shame and feelings of inadequacy underneath. Both paths lead to the same place: a self-image that is inflated but fragile, and that needs constant outside support to survive.

Parenting patterns. Research links NPD with two parenting styles. One is overvaluation: treating the child as special no matter how they behave. The other is cold, neglectful parenting that does not reflect back or validate the child’s feelings. What both lack is steady, warm, realistic validation, which is what lets stable self-esteem develop.

Neurobiological factors. Brain imaging studies have found structural differences in people with NPD. These are in areas linked to empathy, emotion control, and sense of self. One example is less grey matter in parts of the insula, a region tied to empathy (Schulze et al., 2013). These findings do not decide anyone’s future. They suggest that biological vulnerability may combine with childhood experience to cause NPD.

Comorbidities. NPD has high rates of comorbidity. Gori and Topino’s 2025 analysis notes that NPD is linked to a higher risk of mood disorders (Nagel et al., 2023), addictions, and other personality disorders. The Borderline Personality Disorder Test, Antisocial Personality Disorder Test, and Dark Triad Test are worth taking too if you suspect NPD. These conditions often overlap with it.

Looking at your wider personality, beyond any disorder label, can add useful context. Our Free Personality Test measures five core dimensions and gives you a full 16-type profile. One of them, Identity (Assertive vs Turbulent), relates to the unstable self-esteem at the heart of NPD. It is not a clinical tool, but it can help you place narcissistic traits within a broader personality picture.

How This Test Works

This Narcissistic Personality Disorder Quiz covers all nine DSM-5-TR criteria for NPD across 15 questions, weighted to capture both the grandiose and covert presentations. The questions assess grandiosity, need for admiration, entitlement, exploitation, empathy deficit, envy, arrogance, and the covert features of hypersensitivity and shame-based withdrawal.

The test can be completed for yourself or answered with someone else in mind — answering how they typically behave rather than how you do. Both uses are clinically valid and produce interpretable results.

Answer based on consistent patterns over the past 12 months — not isolated incidents or best/worst moments.

• Never = 0
• Rarely = 1
• Sometimes = 2
• Often = 3
• Always = 4

Total range: 0–60. This is a screening tool — only a qualified mental health professional can diagnose NPD through comprehensive clinical assessment.

Understanding Your NPD Test Score

NPD in the Cluster B Context

NPD does not exist in isolation. Understanding its relationship to the other Cluster B personality disorders is clinically important — both for accurate identification and for understanding what overlapping features mean.

Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) shares emotional sensitivity, fear of rejection, and unstable relationships with NPD. The key difference: in BPD, vulnerability and fear of abandonment are visible and openly painful. In NPD, the vulnerability is hidden behind grandiosity. Both can involve intense reactions to perceived rejection, but the underlying structure differs fundamentally.

Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD) shares exploitative behavior and empathy deficit with NPD. The distinction: ASPD involves a more pervasive and consistent disregard for rules and others’ rights, often with a history of conduct problems in childhood. NPD’s exploitation is typically more status-oriented and less consistently predatory than ASPD’s. Both can co-occur.

Dark Triad traits — narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy — all correlate with NPD at the subclinical level. High Dark Triad scores, particularly on the narcissism dimension, may indicate clinically significant NPD patterns worth formal evaluation.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Narcissistic Personality Disorder?

Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) is a Cluster B personality disorder (ICD-10-CM F60.81). It is a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and lack of empathy that begins by early adulthood and shows up across many areas of life. Diagnosis requires at least 5 of 9 DSM-5-TR criteria. Prevalence is estimated at 0.5–5% of the general population. About 75% of diagnoses are in males, but this likely reflects bias in diagnosis as much as real sex differences: covert NPD is more common in women and often missed (APA, 2022; Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 2024). A 2025 network analysis (Gori & Topino) found “need for admiration” to be the most central NPD criterion, with antagonism as the central personality trait.

What is the difference between grandiose and covert narcissism?

Grandiose (overt) NPD is the obvious, externally visible form — openly boastful, dominant, contemptuous, and attention-commanding. Covert (vulnerable) NPD presents very differently on the surface: quiet, apparently modest or self-critical, chronically misunderstood, hypersensitive to criticism, prone to withdrawal and hurt silence. Both subtypes share the same core — inflated self-importance, fragile, externally dependent self-esteem, an empathy deficit, and a persistent need for validation. The difference is in expression, not in the underlying structure. Covert NPD is specifically measured by the Maladaptive Covert Narcissism Scale (MCNS; Cheek, Hendin & Wink, 2013, alpha=.89).

Can someone with NPD change?

Change is possible, but the person has to see the pattern and be troubled by it. That is the main obstacle, because NPD is ego-syntonic: it feels right to the person, not like a problem. Schema Therapy and Transference-Focused Psychotherapy (TFP) have the strongest evidence base for NPD treatment. Both address the underlying developmental schemas and self-structure driving the narcissistic pattern. The outlook depends a lot on how well the person can reflect on themselves. It also depends on whether they want to change once they see what the pattern costs them in relationships, meaning, and wellbeing.

Is NPD more common in men or women?

Approximately 75% of NPD diagnoses are male (APA, 2022). However, researchers and the APA note this likely reflects bias in diagnosis as much as real sex differences. The DSM-5-TR Section II criteria mainly describe the grandiose form, which fits the male stereotype more. Covert (vulnerable) NPD is more common in women. It is often missed or diagnosed as something else (depression, anxiety, BPD). The actual sex ratio for NPD, if both presentations were equally well-recognized, is believed to be closer to equal (APA, 2022).

How is NPD different from healthy confidence or high self-esteem?

Healthy confidence is stable and self-sustaining. It does not need constant outside validation. It can tolerate criticism without producing rage or withdrawal. It includes genuine empathy that is available even when it is inconvenient.

NPD is the opposite. The self-image is inflated but fragile. It needs constant admiration as fuel, collapses into shame or rage when challenged, and cannot hold on to real empathy when empathy clashes with self-interest. On the surface it may look like confidence. Underneath, it is deeply insecure. As the APA notes, those with NPD “may be very sensitive to criticism or defeat, and although they may not show it, those experiences may leave them feeling ashamed, degraded, and empty” (APA, 2022).

There is also a lighter, non-clinical kind of self-focus that is not NPD at all: main character syndrome, a pop-culture term for treating yourself as the protagonist and others as supporting cast. Unlike NPD, it is flexible and often tied to a phase of life. People who have it usually feel uneasy about it and can change. If that description fits better, start there.

Can I be in a relationship with someone with NPD?

Yes — many people are, often for years before the pattern is recognized for what it is. Whether to stay depends on your situation. That includes how severe the NPD is, whether the person is in treatment, and how it affects your well-being.

Research and clinical experience suggest you cannot change a person with NPD through love, patience, giving in, or trying harder. What you can do is get support for yourself. Therapy can help you understand the dynamics, set protective boundaries, and make informed choices about the relationship. The most important step for anyone in a relationship with a high-NPD person is getting appropriate professional support for themselves.

What is the Maladaptive Covert Narcissism Scale (MCNS)?

The Maladaptive Covert Narcissism Scale (MCNS) is a 23-item self-report instrument developed by Cheek, Hendin, and Wink (2013) at Wellesley College to measure covert (vulnerable) narcissistic traits. Unlike the standard NPI (which measures grandiose narcissism), the MCNS specifically captures the hypersensitive, shame-prone, withdrawn expression of narcissism. It has a Cronbach alpha reliability of .89 and correlates .65 with the MMPI measure of covert narcissism. The Covert Narcissism Test provides a dedicated assessment based on the MCNS framework.

Further reading

Narcissism is ego-driven — manipulation in the service of admiration. Machiavellianism is outcome-driven and largely indifferent to being admired. You can measure that second pattern with our Machiavellian Test.

About this test: The questions were written by the PsyMed Editorial Team from the DSM-5-TR criteria. It is an original educational scale that has not been clinically validated, so the score bands are a guide rather than clinical cutoffs. Read how we build our tests and who we are.

Related Tests

• Fake Friend Test — for the friendship version of this pattern — one-sided, self-serving friendships that leave you feeling used
• Covert Narcissism Test — dedicated assessment for vulnerable/covert NPD using the MCNS framework; most relevant for the quiet, sensitive, misunderstood presentation
• Gaslighting Test — gaslighting is the hallmark narcissistic tactic; this examines it directly, from either side
• Dark Triad Test — narcissism as one of three dark personality dimensions; useful for understanding the broader trait context
• Borderline Personality Disorder Test — BPD and NPD overlap in emotional sensitivity and unstable relationships; important to distinguish
• Antisocial Personality Disorder Test — shares exploitative behavior and empathy deficit with NPD; both are Cluster B
• Psychopath Test (PCL-R) — psychopathy and NPD overlap in callousness and entitlement; distinct in other features
• Empathy Test — reduced empathy is the most diagnostically specific NPD feature; complementary assessment
• Histrionic Personality Disorder Test — both are Cluster B; HPD and NPD share attention-seeking and dramatic behavior patterns
• Anxiety Test — NPD is associated with elevated comorbid anxiety; the shame-prone covert presentation in particular
• Clinical Depression Test — comorbid mood disorders are well-documented in NPD (Nagel et al. 2023)
• Full Personality Disorder Test Hub — all ten DSM-5-TR personality disorder types
• Main Character Syndrome Test — the non-clinical, pop-culture version of self-focus; the better fit if the pattern is light, flexible, and self-aware rather than a disorder
• Dark Core Personality Test (D-Factor) — narcissism is one of nine traits sharing a common dark core

References

1. American Psychiatric Association. (2022). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, Text Revision (DSM-5-TR). Narcissistic Personality Disorder F60.81, pp. 760–764. psychiatry.org
2. Gori, A., & Topino, E. (2025). DSM-5-TR Criteria and Domains for Narcissistic Personality Disorder: Evidence From Network Analysis Based on the Mental Health Professionals’ Perspective. Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy, 32(6), e70179. doi.org/10.1002/cpp.70179
3. Cheek, J.M., Hendin, H.M., & Wink, P. (2013). An Expanded Version of the Hypersensitive Narcissism Scale: The Maladaptive Covert Narcissism Scale. academia.edu
4. Rosenthal, S.A., et al. (2020). Narcissistic Personality Disorder. In: Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Cited in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience (2024). doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2024.1354258
5. Caligor, E., Levy, K.N., & Clarkin, J.F. (2015). Narcissistic Personality Disorder: Diagnostic and Clinical Challenges. American Journal of Psychiatry, 172(5), 415–422. doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp.2014.14060723
6. Miller, J.D., et al. (2012). Grandiose and Vulnerable Narcissism: A Nomological Network Analysis. Journal of Personality, 79(5), 1013–1042. doi.org
7. Hendin, H.M., & Cheek, J.M. (1997). Assessing hypersensitive narcissism: A reexamination of Murray’s Narcism Scale. Journal of Research in Personality, 31, 588–599.
8. Schulze, L., et al. (2013). Gray matter abnormalities in patients with narcissistic personality disorder. Journal of Psychiatric Research, 47(10), 1363–1369. doi.org
9. Ronningstam, E. (2011). Narcissistic personality disorder in DSM-V — In support of retaining a significant diagnosis. Journal of Personality Disorders, 25(2), 248–259. doi.org
10. MSD Manual Professional Edition. (n.d.). Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD). Merck & Co. msdmanuals.com