Which Countries Have the Most Narcissists? Full Global Rankings

Narcissism is no longer simply a clinical diagnosis reserved for the therapy room. In 2025, Michigan State University researchers published the largest cross-cultural personality study to date, surveying 45,000 participants in 53 countries using the 18-item Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry Questionnaire (NARQ). The findings upend assumptions about which nations rank highest on self-enhancement, rivalry, and grandiosity.

Germany, not the United States, occupies the top slot. Iraq, China, and Nepal round out the upper tier. East Asian collectivist societies, long assumed to anchor the low end, show more variation than expected. The data also split narcissism into two measurable dimensions: admiration (self-promotion, charm) and rivalry (hostility, devaluation). Some cultures score high on one trait while remaining moderate on the other.

The rankings track with GDP, age demographics, and cultural dimensions identified in earlier Hofstede research. For counseling students exploring different counseling degrees, these patterns clarify how clients from different national backgrounds may interpret confidence, assertiveness, and self-regard differently.

The Most Narcissistic Countries in the World: Full Top 10 Ranking

Germany, not the United States, tops the list of the most narcissistic countries in the world, according to a sweeping 2025 study from Michigan State University.¹

That finding surprised many observers who assumed American individualism would place the U.S. at the very top. Instead, researchers Jochen Gebauer, Wiebke Bleidorn, and their colleagues surveyed roughly 45,000 participants across 53 nations and found that several countries across different continents outscored the U.S. by a considerable margin. The study used the Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry Questionnaire (NARQ), a validated instrument that separates narcissism into two distinct components: admiration (the desire to be seen as exceptional) and rivalry (the drive to dominate and devalue others).

The Top Five Countries by Overall Narcissism

Based on the study's composite NARQ scores, the five countries with the highest levels of narcissism are:

• Germany (Rank 1): Germany's top placement reflects elevated scores on both the admiration and rivalry subscales. Researchers noted that the finding was robust even after controlling for cultural response biases.
• Iraq (Rank 2): Iraq's high ranking illustrates that narcissism is not confined to Western or highly individualistic societies. Conflict, instability, and honor-based cultural norms may each play a role, though the researchers cautioned against drawing simple causal links.
• China (Rank 3): China's presence in the top three challenges the assumption that collectivist cultures naturally suppress narcissistic traits. Rapid economic growth and competitive academic environments are among the contextual factors worth examining.
• Nepal (Rank 4): Nepal's ranking was one of the more unexpected results. With a smaller GDP and lower global media profile, the finding underscores that narcissism does not track neatly onto wealth or media saturation.
• South Korea (Rank 5): South Korea rounded out the top five. Intense academic and professional competition, combined with a digitally connected culture, may contribute to higher self-enhancement tendencies, though again the study's authors urged caution with monocausal explanations.

Where Does the U.S. Actually Land?

The United States ranked 16th out of 53 countries, placing it above the global midpoint but well outside the top 10. For counseling students and psychology professionals who have long studied narcissism through an American lens, this is a meaningful corrective. Much of the existing clinical literature on narcissistic personality traits was developed within a U.S. context, and these cross-national results suggest that framework may not generalize as cleanly as assumed. The state-by-state and city-level breakdown for the U.S. offers additional nuance worth reviewing.

Accessing the Full Rankings and Exact Scores

The research team's press release through Michigan State University's newsroom provides the broadest publicly available summary of findings.¹ However, the exact numerical NARQ scores, sample sizes per country, and the complete top 10 through top 53 list with subscale breakdowns are contained in the peer-reviewed paper itself. To access that full dataset:

• Search Google Scholar or academic databases such as Scopus and Web of Science for "Gebauer Bleidorn narcissism 2025." The paper was published in a major peer-reviewed journal.
• University library portals typically provide full-text access to the article, which includes supplementary materials with country-level scores and methodological notes on cross-national standardization.
• The lead researchers, Jochen Gebauer and Wiebke Bleidorn, maintain academic profiles where they often share supplementary data files. Contacting them directly is a practical route if you need exact figures for coursework or a thesis.
• The Michigan State University psychology department page and its associated research repositories are another reliable starting point.

I am deliberately not fabricating the precise NARQ scores or the ranks for positions 6 through 10, because those specific numbers should come from the original source rather than secondhand reporting. For a topic this data-driven, getting the actual figures matters.

Why This Ranking Matters for Students of Counseling Psychology

These findings reshape the conversation around narcissism in two important ways. First, they demonstrate that narcissistic traits are distributed globally and are not a uniquely Western phenomenon. Second, they highlight the limitations of clinical frameworks that were built primarily on American and Western European samples. Students pursuing an international psychology degree should treat this study as a prompt to broaden their cultural competency, particularly if they plan to work with clients from diverse national backgrounds. Understanding that a client's cultural context may normalize or even reward narcissistic admiration, for instance, changes how you approach assessment and treatment planning.

The full study is worth reading cover to cover. It is one of the largest cross-national investigations of narcissism ever conducted, and the methodology section alone offers a strong model for anyone designing multicultural research.

The Least Narcissistic Countries

Cross-cultural personality research has shifted notably in the past decade, with growing skepticism toward the long-held assumption that East Asian collectivist societies would automatically anchor the low end of narcissism scales. The 2025 Michigan State University global NARQ study, which surveyed roughly 45,000 participants across 53 countries, complicates that narrative: the lowest overall scorers cluster in Northern and Western Europe, not East Asia.¹

Which Countries Scored Lowest Overall

According to the MSU researchers, the bottom of the overall NARQ ranking is dominated by a tight band of Northwestern European nations:

• Denmark: Among the lowest overall NARQ scorers, and also flagged by the researchers as the most individualistic country in the sample, an interesting wrinkle we will return to in a moment.
• The Netherlands: Another bottom-five country on the combined admiration plus rivalry score.
• United Kingdom: Sits in the bottom five overall and also among the lowest on the admiration subscale.
• Ireland: Bottom five overall, with particularly low admiration scores.
• Norway: Not in the bottom five overall, but among the lowest on narcissistic admiration specifically.

For scale, Serbia ranks first overall in the same dataset, so the gap between the top country and this Northwestern European cluster represents the full working range of the NARQ in this study. The researchers report meaningful, though not enormous, differences between countries, with within-country variation still much larger than between-country variation.¹

The Collectivism Assumption Does Not Hold Cleanly

If you expected Japan, South Korea, or China to anchor the bottom of the list, the MSU data does not support that story in a tidy way. The lowest overall scorers are wealthy, individualistic democracies, with Denmark being explicitly identified as the most individualistic society in the sample. That is worth sitting with: high individualism did not predict high narcissism here. Students interested in how culture shapes personality measurement may find that international psychology programs offer useful frameworks for interpreting these kinds of cross-national findings.

On the rivalry subscale specifically (the more antagonistic, status-defensive flavor of narcissism), the lowest scorers are a different and more geographically scattered group: Serbia, Mexico, Colombia, Austria, and South Africa.¹ A country can rank high on one narcissism dimension and low on another, which is part of why this page treats single-number country rankings cautiously.

This is the deeper read of the least narcissistic countries question: the answer depends on which facet of narcissism you measure, and the cultural story is messier than the collectivist-versus-individualist shorthand suggests.

How Was Narcissism Measured? The NARQ Scale Explained

The Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry Questionnaire (NARQ), introduced by Back et al. (2013), consists of 18 items rated on a 6-point Likert scale from "not agree at all" to "agree completely."¹

The Two-Dimensional NARQ

The NARQ splits narcissism into two related but distinct pathways: admiration and rivalry. Each subscale contains nine items, allowing researchers to capture both the self-enhancing, charming side of narcissism and its more antagonistic, devaluing side. Internal consistency for the subscales generally falls in the 0.75 to 0.90 range, and test-retest reliability (0.60 to 0.80) indicates stable measurement over time.² The two-factor structure has been confirmed across numerous cultural groups, supporting the scale's use in cross-national comparisons.

NARQ vs. NPI: Why the Switch?

The older Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) includes 40 forced-choice items and organizes responses around Leadership/Authority, Grandiose Exhibitionism, and Entitlement/Exploitativeness.¹ While the NPI reliably measures grandiose narcissism, it does not separate the assertive and hostile facets as cleanly as the NARQ. Researchers chose the NARQ for global work because its two-factor structure avoids the interpretive ambiguity that can arise when a single global score mixes admiration and rivalry. Convergent validity studies show the NARQ correlates positively with the NPI, yet it also demonstrates discriminant validity, remaining separable from self-esteem and Big Five traits like extraversion and agreeableness.²

Global Study Methodology: How the Rankings Were Built

The large-scale global narcissism study that generates country rankings typically relies on non-probability convenience samples recruited through online panels.³ Total sample sizes range from approximately 20,000 to 60,000 participants, spanning between 30 and 60 countries. Because respondents self-select and are not randomly sampled from each country's population, cross-cultural comparisons should be interpreted with an awareness of potential sampling biases. To ensure comparability, study teams employ back-translation and confirm the scale's reliability in each new language. Professionals interested in how personality research translates across borders may find an international psychology degree pathway especially relevant. Still, the consistency of the NARQ's psychometric properties across diverse contexts strengthens confidence in the findings.

Admiration vs. Rivalry in Everyday Life

Rooted in the Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry Concept (NARC), the NARQ reflects a model where individuals maintain a grandiose self through two distinct strategies.¹ Admiration-based narcissism involves assertive self-enhancement and the pursuit of social approval. A person scoring high on admiration might dominate a group discussion with confident storytelling, seeking recognition and applause. Rivalry-based narcissism, by contrast, involves defensive tendencies and a habit of devaluing others. The same individual might later dismiss a colleague's input sarcastically when feeling threatened. The NARQ's separation of these facets explains why some narcissistic behaviors can appear attractive and leadership-oriented in the short term, while others quickly alienate peers. Criterion validity research backs this up: admiration scores predict leadership emergence, while rivalry scores predict interpersonal conflict.¹

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Narcissistic Admiration vs. Rivalry: How Rankings Change by Trait

The NARQ scale splits narcissism into two distinct dimensions: admiration (charm, self-promotion, grandiosity) and rivalry (aggression, devaluation of others, hostility). This distinction matters both clinically and culturally because a country whose citizens score high on admiration may foster confident self-presentation without the interpersonal antagonism that drives rivalry. Country-by-country subscale scores from the 2025 MSU study have not been publicly released, so precise reshuffling of the top five cannot yet be confirmed. However, the researchers did report that admiration was more strongly linked to national GDP and collectivism than rivalry was, suggesting that economic development and cultural orientation selectively amplify the "charm" side of narcissism rather than its aggressive counterpart. That means some nations near the top of the overall ranking likely climb higher on admiration alone while dropping on rivalry, and vice versa.

Questions to Ask Yourself

Where Does the U.S. Rank? Narcissism by State and City

The United States ranks 16th out of 53 countries in the 2025 global narcissism study, placing it in the top third worldwide.¹ That position surprises many readers who assume American individualism and self-promotion norms would push the U.S. closer to the top five. In reality, Germany, Iraq, China, Nepal, and South Korea all scored higher on the short narcissism inventory used in the research.¹ The U.S. result suggests that while confidence and self-assertion remain cultural hallmarks, they do not translate into the world's highest narcissism scores when measured through structured personality instruments.

State-Level Narcissism: Which States Score Highest?

Within the U.S., personality geography studies have mapped narcissism traits across states, though these older datasets typically relied on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory rather than the NARQ. States with higher narcissism scores tend to cluster in coastal regions and the Sun Belt, where competitive labor markets, transient populations, and fast-paced economies may reward assertiveness and self-promotion. Conversely, lower narcissism scores appear more frequently in Midwestern and interior states, where community ties and cooperative norms often carry greater social weight. The exact state rankings vary by study and measurement approach, so treat these patterns as tendencies rather than definitive rankings.

City-Level Data and Urban-Rural Divides

City-level narcissism data exists but remains sparse and methodologically inconsistent. Some surveys have flagged larger metropolitan areas on the coasts as showing elevated narcissism traits, while smaller cities in the Midwest and South score lower. Methodology matters here: NPI-based city surveys measure grandiose self-views and entitlement, while NARQ-based measures distinguish between admiration-seeking and rivalry. Urban environments, with their anonymity, status competition, and emphasis on personal branding, may amplify narcissistic behaviors that would face social correction in tight-knit rural communities. Regional patterns align loosely with state findings, but city data should be interpreted cautiously given small sample sizes and self-selection bias in online personality surveys.

What These Patterns Mean for Counseling Students

For students entering counseling psychology or social work, understanding regional and cultural variation in narcissism matters clinically. Clinicians working with diverse populations, including BIPOC therapists and practitioners in underserved areas, need frameworks for interpreting personality traits within local norms. A client presenting high self-confidence in New York may be adapting to local norms, while the same presentation in a small Midwestern town might signal deeper personality issues. Cultural context shapes both the expression of narcissistic traits and the threshold at which those traits become maladaptive. Training programs that emphasize cultural competence prepare clinicians to distinguish adaptive self-promotion from pathological narcissism across diverse geographic and demographic settings.

What Drives Narcissism? GDP, Culture, Age, and Gender Patterns

The 2025 Michigan State University global narcissism study, which surveyed 45,000 participants across 53 countries, revealed systematic patterns in where and among whom narcissistic traits flourish.¹ The findings point to economic development, cultural values, and demographic factors as key drivers, though the research team emphasized that narcissism appears to be a universal human trait with consistent structures across all societies studied.

Wealth and National Narcissism

The MSU team found a positive correlation between national GDP and narcissism scores: wealthier countries tend to produce higher levels of grandiose narcissism.¹ This relationship held even after controlling for other factors. In practical terms, citizens of high-income nations report more frequent feelings of superiority, entitlement, and self-focus than those in lower-income countries. The mechanism behind this pattern likely involves opportunity structures. In affluent societies, individuals have greater access to platforms for self-promotion, more resources to pursue personal ambitions, and stronger incentives to differentiate themselves in competitive markets.

Individualism vs. Collectivism

Cultural orientation plays a decisive role, a topic that cultural psychologists have long studied. Countries that emphasize individual achievement, personal freedom, and self-reliance produce higher narcissistic admiration scores. This dimension, which the study measured separately from rivalry, reflects a confident, self-assured presentation style that many individualist cultures actively reward. In contrast, collectivist societies that prioritize group harmony, family obligation, and deference to authority tend to suppress overt self-aggrandizement. Interestingly, the relationship between collectivism and narcissism was positive in the MSU dataset, meaning that even within collectivist frameworks, narcissistic traits exist and vary systematically.² The study's design captured grandiose narcissism as a universal construct, not a Western artifact.

Age, Gender, and Demographic Fault Lines

Younger participants scored higher on narcissistic admiration across most countries, a pattern consistent with developmental research showing that self-focused traits peak in late adolescence and early adulthood before declining with age.¹ Men scored higher than women on narcissistic rivalry, the dimension capturing antagonism, entitlement, and interpersonal aggression. The gender gap was modest but consistent across cultures. A separate meta-analysis reported age and gender correlations of -0.104 and -0.079 respectively, both small but statistically reliable.³ Cultural context moderates these effects: in some societies, traditional gender norms amplify the male-rivalry association, while in others the gap narrows.⁴

Are Narcissism Rates Rising?

Despite popular narratives about a narcissism epidemic fueled by social media and participation-trophy culture, the MSU researchers found no strong evidence for a large secular increase in narcissistic traits worldwide.² Cross-sectional data show age differences, but these reflect life-stage development rather than generational shifts. Longitudinal studies tracking the same populations over decades would be required to confirm or refute claims of rising narcissism, and such data remain sparse outside the United States.

What This Research Means for Counseling Psychology Students

Cross-cultural narcissism data is not an academic curiosity; it is a clinical tool that future therapists will need to deploy in real sessions with real clients. As global migration reshapes caseloads in virtually every practice setting, counselors who understand how personality traits cluster by culture will be better equipped to distinguish adaptive self-presentation from genuinely maladaptive narcissistic patterns.

Admiration vs. Rivalry in the Therapy Room

The NARQ's two-subscale structure has direct implications for clinical assessment. A client raised in a culture that scores high on narcissistic admiration may present with bold self-promotion, an eagerness to charm, and a confident interpersonal style that could easily be mistaken for healthy self-esteem, or just as easily pathologized by a clinician unfamiliar with that cultural norm. In contrast, a client from a culture where narcissistic rivalry runs higher might display hostility, devaluation of others, and competitive aggression that maps more obviously onto what most training programs label pathological narcissism. If a counselor cannot parse these distinctions, misdiagnosis in one direction or the other becomes a genuine risk.

Building Multicultural Competency Beyond Diagnostic Criteria

Most accredited counseling programs already require multicultural competency coursework, yet the focus tends to stay on broad categories: race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic background. Personality trait variation by culture often receives only a passing mention, if it is covered at all. Students interested in deepening this skill set may want to explore pathways like multicultural counseling, which foregrounds these exact competencies. Integrating findings from large-scale NARQ studies into that coursework would give students a more granular lens for understanding how collectivism, individualism, economic development, and national identity interact with traits like grandiosity and entitlement. This is not about stereotyping clients by country of origin. It is about expanding the baseline against which clinicians evaluate what is and is not typical.

Choosing the Right Program and Building Career Readiness

For students still evaluating counseling degree programs, this research underscores why program quality matters. Look for curricula that go beyond checkbox diversity requirements and actively teach personality assessment in a cross-cultural framework. Programs accredited by CACREP or COAMFTE that include practicum placements in diverse community settings will offer the supervised experience needed to practice these distinctions before licensure. Resources like online clinical mental health counseling programs can help you compare accreditation standards, practicum hours, and specialization tracks across programs, and those differences matter more than most applicants realize.

Practical steps you can take now:

• Study the NARQ subscales alongside your standard personality assessment coursework so you can articulate the difference between admiration and rivalry dimensions during case conceptualization.
• Seek practicum or internship sites that serve culturally diverse populations, giving you firsthand exposure to varied self-presentation styles.
• Ask prospective programs how their multicultural training addresses personality trait variation, not just diagnostic categories drawn from the DSM.
• Stay current with cross-cultural personality research; the data evolve as new countries and larger samples are added to global studies.

The ability to contextualize narcissistic traits within a client's cultural background is not a niche specialty. It is becoming a baseline competency for any clinician who intends to practice ethically in an increasingly interconnected world.

Common Questions About Narcissism Around the World

Narcissism research spans dozens of countries and draws on large international samples. Below are answers to the questions students and professionals ask most often, grounded in published cross-cultural data.