narcissism on narcissism

This Study About Narcissism Is Literally Us

Who's the beauty staring back at me?
Who’s the beauty staring back at me? Photo: Constance Bannister/Getty Images

A new study published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin found that if your friends are narcissists, you probably are, too. Wow, this study is literally us.

The study measured participants on what they ominously refer to as the “Big Five”: extraversion, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism. They then compared results from questionnaires filled out by 290 pairs of BFFs and found “evidence that narcissists are even more tolerant of others’ narcissistic traits (such as being bossy, aggressive, arrogant, and selfish) when they possess these characteristics themselves.” Hahaha, sooooo us, am I right??

Besties were more likely to score in the same range on the “Big Five” portion of the questionnaire because like, we would. The survey was intended to measure best friends’ similarity in the even more ominous “Dark Triad”: narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. They found that psychopaths befriend other psychopaths, master manipulators befriend master manipulators, and narcissists befriend narcissists. OMG, same.