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Narcissism: Is parenting style to blame, or is

there X-chromosome involvement?
Article in Psychiatry Research July 2014
Impact Factor: 2.47 DOI: 10.1016/j.psychres.2014.07.003 Source: PubMed

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2 authors:
Gabrielle Miles

Andrew J.P. Francis

RMIT University

RMIT University

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Retrieved on: 30 June 2016

Psychiatry Research 219 (2014) 712713

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Psychiatry Research
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/psychres

Letter to the Editor

Narcissism: Is parenting style to blame, or is
there X-chromosome involvement?
To the Editors:
Sub-clinical narcissism is understood to be a stable, dimensional personality trait portraying self-centeredness, self-aggrandizement, dominance and interpersonal manipulation, as well as
being characterized by impaired cognition as evidenced by distorted perceptions of self and others. At extreme levels and with
further impairment, narcissism may result in a personality disorder (PD) diagnosis (Campbell and Miller, 2011; Lootens, 2011).
However, clinical experience and personality research reveals
narcissistic behavior to be more complex than that described for
the grandiose type dened in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual
of Mental Disorders (DSM) IV. Covert/hypervigilant subtypes
whereby individuals are overly sensitive, easily hurt and shamed
are reported to be more prevalent in clinical patients, and
uctuations in individuals between grandiose and vulnerable
self-states have been found to be common (Dimaggio, 2012).
While aspects of narcissistic personality pathology include maladaptive interpersonal schemas, impaired metacognition, and poor
emotion and behavioral regulation (Dimaggio, 2012), to date
etiology for narcissism and narcissistic PD development appears
complex and remains unclear, despite various theories having
been proposed. These include cultural, evolutionary, and gene X
environment, as well as parenting and developmental models
(Campbell and Miller, 2011).
Recently Lootens (2011) found perceived maternal and paternal
authoritarian parenting to be associated with offspring narcissism.
However, twin studies have consistently demonstrated considerable
narcissism heritability (Campbell and Miller, 2011). Therefore, our
study aimed to investigate both parenting and genetic factors, including possible mode of inheritance, in sub-clinical grandiose narcissism.
One hundred and forty-four community participants belonging
to 36 self-reported biological family groups comprising mother,
father, sons and daughters, completed the Narcissistic Personality
Inventory (NPI) and the Parental Authority Questionnaire (PAQ),
measuring perceptions of parenting style. A total of 18 correlations
were performed in the analysis, seven of which related to the
comparison of parentsoffspring and offspringoffspring NPI
scores. In order to control for Type I error, a more stringent criteria
of p 0.01 was adopted. Results indicated a signicant father
daughter correlation for levels of narcissism with a near large
effect size (r 0.48, p 0.015), but close to zero correlations for the
other parentoffspring dyads. These results were cautiously interpreted as indicating a genetic basis for NPI measured narcissism
with possible X-chromosome involvement since a father's single
X-chromosome is passed directly to every daughter but not to
sons, while a mother passes one of her two X-chromosomes
randomly to all offspring. Meiosis provides X-chromosome
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2014.07.003
0165-1781/& 2014 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

recombination in females only, resulting in a 50 percent possibility

of a recombined X-chromosome being passed on by the mother.
Furthermore, X-inactivation modies female X-chromosome gene
expression (Migeon, 2007), to the extent that in the case of
heterozygous mothers, the fatherdaughter relationship for
X-chromosome gene expression similarity is likely to be stronger
than all other parentoffspring dyads. To test the X-linked hypothesis further, sibling correlational analyses were also performed.
Sistersister NPI score correlations were predicted to be higher
than brotherbrother or sisterbrother NPI correlations. Although
the data splits required for these analyses reduced sample sizes
considerably resulting in inadequate analysis power, trends were
observed in the predicted direction: sistersister, r(7) 0.56,
p 0.19; sisterbrother, r(13) 0.52, p 0.067; and brother
brother, r(6)  0.42, p 0.41.
There is possibly some other yet to be determined environmental inuence which is either responsible for, or contributes to,
the observed fatherdaughter relationship. However, Goldstein
et al. (2011) have suggested that X-linked gene transmission is
relevant to psychoses associated with schizophrenia, as well as
other affective disorders (e.g. bipolar disorder with psychosis).
This notion could have relevance to the characteristic distorted
perceptions of narcissistic individuals, since it appears that the
delusional symptoms of psychoses exist on a continuum in the
general population (Allardyce et al., 2007).
Using self-report measures in a narcissistic population is
known to have limitations due to the individual's characteristic
distorted perceptions of self and others, as well as their tendency
to self-aggrandize. This limitation may not be relevant to family
dyad comparisons of NPI scores since any individual scoring high
on NPI is likely to self-aggrandize, as would be expected for all
other family members scoring high on NPI.
However, the self-report limitation may be relevant to the
accuracy of the PAQ, as recollections of parenting in childhood by
narcissistic individuals may be skewed by distorted perceptions of
others. Despite this possible limitation, associations between
perceived parenting styles and offspring narcissism across the
gender and generation groups were few and inconsistent: (a) For
the offspring generation, a moderate positive correlation was
found between overall offspring narcissism levels and perceived
authoritarian fathers, r(62) 0.33, p 0.01, but not between overall
offspring narcissism and perceived authoritarian mothers. (b) For
the parent generation, a moderate positive correlation was found
for females between levels of narcissism and perceived permissive
fathers, r(43) 0.32, p 0.036, but not for males. No relationship
was found between levels of offspring narcissism and the mother's
perceived parenting style. (c) For the combined generations,
a small positive correlation was found between overall offspring
narcissism levels and perceived authoritarian fathers, r(144)
0.18, p 0.035, but no correlation was found with perceived
authoritarian mothers.

Letter to the Editor / Psychiatry Research 219 (2014) 712713

Although preliminary, we suggest these results may indicate

a possible genetic basis, including X-chromosome involvement, for
NPI measured narcissistic traits, with PAQ parenting style contributing relatively little to the behavior. Larger scale studies, using
DNA veried biological family groups and assessing narcissism by
clinical interview and peer report (in addition to the self-report),
are suggested to further explore the hypothesis of X-chromosome
involvement. Exploration of other parenting styles, extraversion,
agreeableness, testosterone levels, emotion recognition, decisionmaking, and sensitivity to reward is also recommended. Outcomes
of these studies could provide important information for the
development of treatment approaches for narcissism and NPD.

References

713

Dimaggio, G., 2012. Narcissistic personality disorder: rethinking what we know.

Psych Central. Retrieved on June 10, 2014, from http://pro.psychcentral.com/
narcissistic-personality-disorder-rethinking-what-we-know/00986.html.
Goldstein, J.M., Cherkerzian, S., Seidman, L.J., Petryshen, T.L., Fitzmaurice, G.,
Tsuang, M.T., Buka, S.L., 2011. Sex-specic rates of transmission of psychosis
in the New England high-risk family study. Schizophrenia Research 128,
150155.
Lootens, C.M., 2011. An examination of the relationships among personality traits,
perceived parenting styles, and narcissism. Dissertation Abstracts International:
Section B: The Sciences and Engineering, 72 (2-B).
Migeon, B.R., 2007. Why females are mosaics, X-chromosome inactivation, and sex
differences in disease. Gender Medicine 4, 97105.

Gabrielle J. Milesn, Andrew J.P. Francis

Department of Psychology, RMIT University, Plenty Road, Bundoora,
Vic 3083, Australia
E-mail addresses: gabrielle.miles@rmit.edu.au (G.J. Miles), andrew.
francis@rmit.edu.au (A.J. Francis)

Allardyce, J., Suppes, T., Van Os, J., 2007. Dimensions and the psychosis phenotype.
International Journal of Methods in Psychiatry Research 16 (S1), S34S40.
Campbell, W.K., Miller, J.D. (Eds.), 2011. The Handbook of Narcissism and Narcissistic Personality Disorder: Theoretical Approaches, Empirical Findings, and
Treatments. John Wiley and Sons, Hoboken.

Received 7 March 2014

Available online 11 July 2014

Corresponding author.