Have You Taken the Online Narcissism Test, Yet?
Diving in to test my score
I don’t think I’m a narcissist. But when I heard Dr. Drew Pinsky (known as Dr. Drew) developed an online test to determine your level of narcissism, I was intrigued.
Before we go any further, let’s acknowledge that an online test can’t actually diagnose you as anything. This needs to be done by a qualified mental health professional. If anything, the test is going to give me a sense of the kinds of indicators that suggest narcissistic tendencies.
The test is Dr. Drew’s lead magnet for his book The Mirror Effect: How Celebrity Narcissism is Seducing America.
As lead magnets go, it’s a great one, because who doesn’t want to know how narcissistic they are? I also acknowledge that wanting to get my narcissism score is a little… you know.
I’m surprised to see this book was published way back in 2008. Dr. Drew was really ahead of the curve in seeing where the world was headed. Instagram wasn’t even invented yet and we were barely even Keeping Up With the Kardashians, the first family of narcissism. It was a much more innocent time.
It seems your warnings fell on deaf ears, Dr. Drew.
The Test
The test is right here if you want to take it with me. It’s 40-questions with binary responses — you get two options and must choose the one that best describes you.
I’ve designed market research for 20 years, so some of these questions irked me. A binary question should be an either/or situation, where you are given two opposing options. The first question is a good example:
But some of these questions don’t work that way. Take question 14:
These aren’t opposing options. What if you don’t agree that you get the respect you deserve, but you also don’t insist that people give it to you? This question would’ve been better expressed as:
- Sometimes I don’t get the respect I deserve
- I insist on getting the respect I deserve
I also suspect non-native English speakers would find some of the language and wording confusing. Why use the phrase: “Modesty doesn’t become me” when you can say “I’m not very modest?”
But enough quibbling. You’re here to see my results, right?
The Test Results
The test has 40 questions, so the maximum score is 40. The highest recorded score is 34 out of 40. Before you continue, stop for a second and guess which celebrity scored 34. Can you guess the biggest narcissist in Hollywood? Hint: it’s probably not someone you’d expect.
I got a score of 9 out of 40. They also break your results down into seven categories related to narcissism. Here are my results:
It’s interesting to see my score for Exploitativeness is medium. They asked questions about if you can manipulate people versus whether or not you do manipulate people. I’m pretty persuasive, but I don’t try to manipulate people. I expect that’s why I’m a medium there, but maybe that’s wishful thinking on my part!
I’m actually happy I scored medium in the Authority and Self-Sufficiency categories. These seem like good traits in moderation.
The most interesting part of this for me is that the average score for Americans is 15. That gives me a benchmark against which to compare my score, which seems fairly low.
The results suggest I’m not very narcissistic. I’m not surprised. I’m as far from perfect as any of us, but I don’t think narcissism is a big issue for me.
I’d love to see the American narcissism results broken down by Los Angeles and NYC versus the rest of the country. I expect we’d see a lower score in the so-called “fly over” states.
Dr. Drew revealed the average celebrity score is 18. Wouldn’t you think it would be higher? But then again, that may illustrate a second issue with the test. It’s easy to manipulate because it’s just you judging whether or not you have certain qualities. That’s hugely subjective. It would’ve been better to get people to answer questions on specific behaviors.
You may have noticed the highest recorded score thus far is from Robin Quivers, Howard Stern’s longtime co-host. I don’t listen to Howard Stern so I have no personal experience with her. I did find this interesting video of Robin discussing her score with Dr. Drew (below).
She actually acknowledges being a little proud of having the highest score, which seems classically narcissistic. However, the dynamic of this video is a little tense. Robin continues to laugh through it, but you can feel her underlying frustration. By the end, everyone’s talking over each other. It’s interesting to watch.
If you took the test with me, I’d love to hear what you learned about yourself in the comments. I thought the buckets were interesting. You can have a fairly high score on certain components of narcissism and a lower score on others.
Now I need to figure out how to get some of the more narcissistic people in my life to take it.
Thanks for reading. Here’s a related story on the benefits of holding ourselves accountable.
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