3 Questions That Could Give Away a Narcissist

When you’re interacting with someone especially high in narcissism, chances are you’re pretty tuned into their personality. From trying to refocus every conversation back onto themselves to showing little concern or empathy for others, these individuals likely make it pretty clear that they care about #1 and no one else.

Once you’re aware of someone’s narcissistic tendencies, either through a longstanding relationship or enough exposure in briefer interactions, you can make decisions about next steps. If it’s too annoying or frustrating, you’ll forget it, but if you’re stuck with them, then you just have to grin and bear it. However, what if you actually don’t know this person well, but still get narcissistic vibes?

Why It’s Important To Figure Out Who’s a Narcissist

A new study by San Francisco State University’s Kevin Eschlemann and colleagues (2025) raises this problem in the context of the job application process—specifically, the interview. In these high-stakes situations, it’s important for employers to know what they’re getting into before they get into it.

You can probably relate to this situation even if you’re not someone in charge of hiring. Perhaps you’re trying to decide who to invite to your book club or planning committee for a community event. You’re introduced to a new person who seems quite nice, but something seems a tiny bit off. Is there an easy way to check out your suspicions?

Eschlemann et al. note that the danger of asking a narcissist to enter your world, whether at work or otherwise, is the “destructive” behavior they are capable of committing. Regarding the workplace, people high in narcissistic grandiosity “may put an organization at risk of pursuing short-term gains over long-term economic health, valuing profit over corporate responsibility, and adopting a transactional ‘what’s in it for me’ orientation” (p. 317). They can also engage in bullying and rule-breaking. Not only are these individuals unpleasant to have around, then, but their behavior puts everyone else in harm’s way.

The Clues that Narcissists Often Can't Help but Give Off

Because narcissists have at their disposal so many tactics to manipulate others, including seeming highly motivated and competent, it’s important for anyone in a position to bring one on board to figure out quickly what they’re dealing with. However, it’s also important that such detective work be done efficiently. You can’t realistically give someone, even in personnel testing, a complete narcissism inventory. And in situations outside of work, you have even fewer methods at your disposal.

Recognizing the need for easy detection, the San Francisco State team set as their goal the development of a short, behaviorally-oriented set of interview questions that would meet the criteria of reliability (consistency) and validity (predictability). Their focus was on narcissistic grandiosity, given that individuals who display this form of narcissism (vs. vulnerability) may be the ones most likely to create problems at work.

The authors began with a set of 19 items developed by experts in assessment and personnel selection, with the intention of narrowing these down to the questions that would perform best. Across four studies, these items were tested using asynchronous video interviews, refined, and then evaluated for feasibility. All participants in these studies were undergraduate students, which is somewhat of a limitation, but all of these students had nearly full-time jobs. They were also in career development courses, making the research topic itself relevant to their vocational plans.

Following the testing of the original 19-item version, Ecklemann et al. were able to narrow the pool down to five items, from which these three emerged as the most reliable and best predictors of other narcissism scale scores (raters score each on a 1-5 scale):

1. Do you consider yourself a natural-born leader or someone who’s had to learn how to lead? Provide an example of your leadership approach
2. Imagine you are working on a team that requires unanimous consent to move forward on a project. The other members have agreed upon a plan for the project that you strongly disagree with. How do you proceed?
3. Imagine you are the leader of a group and someone on your team openly expressed their concern with one of your decisions to you and others. It turns out that your decision was the correct call. How would you handle this situation?

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What’s particularly good about these items is that they seem reasonable enough; no one would suspect that it’s narcissism being tested. Indeed, in the fourth study in the series, participants rated these questions for comfort and suitability just to make sure they're easy to use.

If you were giving a version of these questions to someone new, you could adapt them to your own situation (e.g., the book club). For guidance in rating, the author provided the following criteria for item 3:

Very low narcissistic grandiosity: Focuses on growth and development opportunities, importance of respect for others, and open communication. Sample response: “I wouldn’t brag or rub it in their face. I would try to make sure they are feeling OK about the disagreement and let them know their opinion always matters.”

Very high narcissistic grandiosity: States that they are always right, views situations as ways to validate their leadership, and expresses frustration over being questioned about making the right call. Sample response: “I would prove to everyone that I was correct.”

The reliability of the 3-item interview was in the .60s, less than the desirable .70 or higher, both in terms of rater agreement and the tendency of the items to form a cohesive scale. But given how short the measure is, these numbers are reasonably impressive. The authors note that they weren’t trying to create a diagnostic assessment tool, just a quick screening measure.

Putting the Three Questions to Use

Given that you aren’t necessarily in the business of issuing diagnoses with the people you meet informally, these three questions can therefore be quite useful. They give you some language to use to adapt to whatever your situation is. You just have to ask about leadership style, ability to cooperate, and the tendency to lord it over others when they’re right and other people are wrong. As you fashion the questions to your particular situation, you can also look for some of the clues in the ratings provided by the SFSU authors.

One other point the authors make is also useful to keep in mind. Often, your mindset in trying to decide whether to get into a relationship with someone new is whether to enter. However, you should also be considering whether to exit. Using signs that they may take a transactional, ego-enhancing approach in your future dealings with them is an important step in this process.

To sum up, people high in narcissistic grandiosity may try to cover up their tendencies. Knowing the right questions to ask can help you penetrate that false veneer and decide whether they’ll help or hurt your own fulfillment.