Anthropocentric Narcissism Scale (ANS)

1. Abstract

The Anthropocentric Narcissism Scale (ANS) is a psychometric instrument developed by Elif Çimşir, Murat Doğan Şahin, and Ramazan Akdoğan (2024) designed to operationalize and quantify the psychological construct of anthropocentric narcissism. Distinct from conventional personality measures of individual self-enhancement or broader ideological indices of general environmental attitudes, the ANS measures an individual’s psychological propensity to prioritize human species-level interests, entitlements, and utilitarian welfare above the intrinsic rights, moral status, and ecological equilibrium of non-human living beings and natural ecosystems. The construct integrates foundational concepts from narcissistic personality theory—such as grandiose entitlement, perceived superiority, dominance, and instrumental exploitation—with socio-ecological paradigms of anthropocentrism. Developed through a multi-stage psychometric design starting from an initial pool of 15 candidate items derived from theoretical frameworks (e.g., Crowe et al., 2019; Dunlap et al., 2000), the instrument was systematically refined via expert item analysis, pilot testing, and exploratory factor analysis (EFA). The finalized unidimensional scale comprises 7 items evaluated on a 7-point Likert-type response scale ranging from 1 (“Strongly disagree”) to 7 (“Strongly agree”). Validation data collected from an adult sample in Turkey (aged 18 to 65 years) demonstrated robust internal consistency, yielding a Cronbach’s alpha of α = 0.82 and a composite reliability (CR) of 0.84. Exploratory factor analytic procedures substantiated a single-factor solution that accounted for 48.72% of the total variance, characterized by an eigenvalue of 3.40. As an empirically sound and theoretically grounded assessment tool, the ANS provides researchers and practitioners with an efficient metric for investigating the interplay between human supremacy beliefs, climate change skepticism, planetary health concerns, psychological symptom profiles, and eco-anxiety.

2. Keywords

Anthropocentric Narcissism, Human Superiority, Anthropocentrism, Environmental Attitudes, Eco-Anxiety, Speciesism, Psychometrics, Factor Analysis, Scale Validation, Planetary Health

3. Authors

The Anthropocentric Narcissism Scale (ANS) was conceptualized, developed, and empirically validated by a team of counseling and psychological science researchers based in Turkey:

• Elif Çimşir, Ph.D. (Corresponding Author): Department of Guidance & Psychological Counseling, Faculty of Education, Anadolu University, Yunus Emre Campus, Tepebaşı, 26470 Eskişehir, Turkey. Email: [email protected]. ORCID: Author ORCID Profile.
• Murat Doğan Şahin, Ph.D.: Department of Guidance & Psychological Counseling, Faculty of Education, Anadolu University, Eskişehir, Turkey.
• Ramazan Akdoğan, Ph.D.: Department of Guidance & Psychological Counseling, Faculty of Education, Anadolu University, Eskişehir, Turkey.

4. Purpose

The primary purpose of the Anthropocentric Narcissism Scale (ANS) is to offer a concise, psychometrically rigorous, and theoretically validated self-report instrument capable of measuring the extent to which human beings view their own biological species as entitled, inherently superior, and rightful rulers over the natural biosphere. For decades, environmental psychology has utilized broad measurement paradigms—such as the New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) scale (Dunlap et al., 2000)—to assess human-exemptionalist beliefs and anthropocentric value orientations. However, many general environmental scales treat anthropocentrism merely as an ideological, philosophical, or cognitive stance rather than an emotionally charged, self-aggrandizing psychological orientation rooted in the psychodynamics of collective narcissism, entitlement, and hierarchical dominance.

In response to escalating planetary crises, including anthropogenic global climate breakdown, biodiversity collapse, and widespread ecological disruption, contemporary psychological research has increasingly emphasized the emotional and behavioral dynamics governing human engagement with the natural world. On one hand, scholars have identified growing levels of eco-distress and eco-anxiety, conceptualized as chronic worry, apprehension, and existential dread regarding environmental degradation (Hogg et al., 2021). On the other hand, destructive environmental behaviors often stem from underlying attitudes of human invulnerability, moral exclusion of non-human species, and an exaggerated sense of species supremacy. The ANS was explicitly engineered to capture this specific psychological facet—anthropocentric narcissism—to bridge the gap between clinical/personality constructs of narcissism and ecopsychological investigations.

From an applied research perspective, the ANS serves multiple functions:

• Investigation of Ecological Attitudes and Eco-Anxiety: As demonstrated in its original validation context (Çimşir, Şahin, & Akdoğan, 2024), the ANS enables researchers to examine how species-level self-absorption relates to eco-anxiety, climate change avoidance, and broader general psychopathology. Individuals high in anthropocentric narcissism often externalize ecological challenges or disregard environmental risks because such hazards challenge their assumption of human mastery.
• Ecological Public Policy and Environmental Communication: The scale allows conservation psychologists and behavioral economists to identify target sub-populations whose underlying narcissistic species-identity acts as a barrier to pro-environmental behaviors, resource conservation, and circular economy compliance.
• Educational and Counseling Diagnostics: In psychoeducational settings, environmental ethics workshops, and ecopsychological counseling, the ANS can be utilized to facilitate self-reflection regarding human supremacy narratives, helping participants deconstruct personal beliefs concerning entitlement, ecological domination, and exploitation.

5. Psychological Construct

The psychological construct assessed by the ANS is Anthropocentric Narcissism. While traditional psychology conceptualizes narcissism primarily as an intrapersonal personality trait or a socio-relational pathology—defined by grandiosity, an inflated sense of self-importance, moral entitlement, an absence of empathy, and an exploitative orientation toward other human beings (Crowe et al., 2019; DSM-5)—anthropocentric narcissism projects these psychological features onto the collective identity of the human species (Homo sapiens) in its relationship to non-human life and the physical environment.

Rather than expressing personal grandiosity (“I am inherently superior to all other people”), the respondent endorsing anthropocentric narcissism displays species-level grandiosity (“We, humans, are the most valuable creatures in nature”). The construct encompasses four interconnected core dimensions that operate as a coherent unidimensional operational entity:

1. Species Grandiosity and Inherent Superiority

This dimension reflects the psychological conviction that humans possess an ontological and moral value vastly exceeding that of all other sentient and non-sentient biological life forms. It mirrors the narcissistic need for uniqueness and superior status, manifested as an uncompromising human exceptionalism. The individual views the evolutionary status of humans not merely as biologically distinct, but as hierarchically supreme.

2. Moral and Ontological Entitlement

Parallel to psychological entitlement—wherein an individual believes they are inherently deserving of preferential treatment, special accommodations, and unearned privileges—anthropocentric entitlement assumes that human interests systematically supersede the survival, habitat integrity, and biological needs of non-human species. It assumes humans hold inherent legal, ethical, and metaphysical rights over the Earth’s ecosystems (e.g., “I think we humans have more rights over nature”).

3. Hierarchical Dominance and Hegemonic Control

In clinical narcissism, dominance is used to neutralize perceived vulnerability and enforce social hierarchies. In anthropocentric narcissism, this takes the form of an aggressive rejection of ecological adaptation in favor of ecological mastery, subjugation, and authoritarian control. Rather than viewing the human species as an embedded participant within complex trophic webs, the individual asserts that humanity’s rightful biological role is that of a “natural ruler” or planetary sovereign (e.g., “I believe that we should dominate nature and other living things rather than adapt to them”).

4. Instrumental Exploitation and Utilitarian Commodification

A classic hallmark of narcissistic psychopathology is the instrumentalization of external entities—viewing people purely as “narcissistic supplies” or transactional instruments to serve the self’s goals. Transposed to an ecological plane, anthropocentric narcissism reduces non-human living entities, natural resources, and entire biomes to their utilitarian value for human consumption, comfort, and technological progress. Ecological elements possess zero intrinsic worth; their legitimacy is indexed solely by their human-serving utility (e.g., “The importance of other living things and natural resources can be measured by the benefits they provide to humans”).

6. Theoretical Framework

The Anthropocentric Narcissism Scale is situated at the intersection of three major theoretical domains: Social Identity Theory applied to collective narcissism, the New Ecological Paradigm of environmental sociology, and cognitive-evolutionary theories of speciesism and moral exclusion.

Collective Narcissism and Species In-Group Primacy

The foundational psychological mechanics of the ANS draw heavily upon the concept of collective narcissism, originally conceptualized by Agnieszka Golec de Zavala and colleagues (2009). Collective narcissism describes an exaggerated, emotionally defensive investment in the unrealistic greatness of an in-group. While social identity theory posits that humans categorize themselves into various social, national, ethnic, or political in-groups to preserve subjective well-being and positive self-esteem (Tajfel & Turner, 1986), collective narcissism extends this categorization into an adversarial conviction that the in-group’s extraordinary qualities are insufficiently acknowledged by out-groups.

When applied to human-nature relations, the in-group is defined biologically at the species boundary (Homo sapiens), while the out-group encompasses the totality of the non-human biosphere. Anthropocentric narcissism manifests as an acute form of collective species narcissism: humans demand unilateral planetary deference, view nature’s resistance (such as natural disasters or biophysical boundaries) as an affront to human sovereignty, and assert unchecked dominance over non-human life.

The Anthropocentrism-Ecocentrism Duality

The scale integrates seminal sociological insights from Dunlap and Van Liere’s (1978) and Dunlap et al.’s (2000) conceptualization of the Dominant Social Paradigm (DSP) versus the New Ecological Paradigm (NEP). The DSP is characterized by human-exemptionalist assumptions: humanity exists outside and above the biological laws of nature, natural resources are limitless or infinitely substitutable through human ingenuity, and humans possess an absolute license to exploit the physical earth. Conversely, the ecocentric worldview conceptualizes humanity as an interdependent, co-equal biological entity within an interconnected web of life with strict biophysical limits.

The ANS focuses explicitly on the psychological, narcissistic underpinnings of the DSP. Rather than simply evaluating passive agreement with economic development, the ANS measures the active, affective, and psychological convictions of human grandiosity and moral entitlement that underwrite environmental degradation.

Speciesism and the Moral Circle

Theoretically, the construct also intersects with Peter Singer’s (1975) philosophical exposition of speciesism—a prejudice or bias in favor of the interests of members of one’s own species and against those of members of other species—and Susan Opotow’s (1990) theory of moral exclusion. Moral exclusion occurs when individuals or collectives perceive others as existing outside the boundary in which moral values, rules of fairness, and ethical considerations apply. The ANS measures the explicit operationalization of moral exclusion directed outward from humans to the non-human living sphere, legitimizing exploitation through ideological rationalizations of superiority.

7. Validity

The psychometric evaluation of the Anthropocentric Narcissism Scale was conducted in accordance with standard test construction guidelines to establish content, construct, and concurrent validity (Çimşir, Şahin, & Akdoğan, 2024).

Content and Face Validity

The initial phase of instrument development involved synthesizing theoretical literature on human supremacy, the New Ecological Paradigm, and multidimensional narcissism (e.g., Crowe et al., 2019; Dunlap et al., 2000). A preliminary pool of 15 candidate items was drafted to capture human entitlement, utilitarian exploitation, and dominance over natural ecosystems. An expert panel comprising scholars in psychological counseling, educational measurement, and environmental psychology evaluated these items for conceptual clarity, construct representation, and developmental suitability. Based on qualitative expert ratings and content validity criteria, 3 items showing redundancy or semantic ambiguity were removed, retaining 12 items. A pilot study involving adult participants provided qualitative and quantitative feedback regarding readability, leading to minor linguistic adjustments on 2 items before final psychometric field testing.

Construct and Factorial Validity

Construct validity was formally examined in a normative sample of Turkish adults (N ranging across demographic strata aged 18 to 65 years). Exploratory factor analysis demonstrated that the construct operates as an internally unified, single-factor dimension. During the iterative factor extraction process, items demonstrating lower communalities or cross-loadings were systematically pruned, resulting in an optimal 7-item scale with robust standardized factor loadings. The final model accounted for nearly half of the total variance without necessitating multidimensional partitioning, verifying that anthropocentric narcissism functions parsimoniously as a global construct.

Convergent, Criterion, and Discriminant Validity

Validity was further evaluated by examining the relationships between the ANS, the Turkish adaptation of the Hogg Eco-Anxiety Scale (HEAS-36), and validated indices of general psychological distress (depression, anxiety, and somatic stress). The empirical findings revealed significant patterns: individuals scoring higher on anthropocentric narcissism systematically demonstrated distinct cognitive-affective profiles regarding environmental risks. The ANS demonstrated convergent validity with related environmental dominance measures, while maintaining empirical distinctiveness (discriminant validity) from measures of pure individual-level neuroticism and generalized psychiatric symptomatology, confirming that it captures a unique ideological-personality dimension rather than generalized affective distress.

8. Reliability

The reliability profile of the Anthropocentric Narcissism Scale has been rigorously documented through indices of internal consistency, item-total correlations, and composite metric stability:

Internal Consistency

In the primary empirical validation investigation conducted by Çimşir, Şahin, and Akdoğan (2024), the final 7-item version demonstrated high internal consistency across a broad sample of adult respondents:

• Cronbach’s Alpha (α): The global internal consistency coefficient was calculated at α = 0.82. In psychometric research, an alpha coefficient surpassing 0.80 satisfies the rigorous benchmark for basic research applications and group-level psychological assessment, indicating that the individual items share strong common variance without problematic redundancy.
• Composite Reliability (CR): To evaluate reliability free from the assumption of tau-equivalence (which can bias Cronbach’s alpha), composite reliability was estimated. The ANS yielded a CR = 0.84, surpassing the standard cutoff of 0.70 and confirming structural scale reliability.

Measurement Precision and Scale Homogeneity

Analysis of corrected item-total correlations revealed that all 7 items correlated significantly and positively with the overarching composite score. No individual item removal resulted in an increase in Cronbach’s alpha, supporting the inclusion of all 7 items. The standard error of measurement across the observed scores remained low, indicating that the scale reliably discriminates between individuals with low, moderate, and high levels of anthropocentric narcissistic beliefs across adulthood.

9. Factor Analysis

The structural dimensionality of the Anthropocentric Narcissism Scale was evaluated using Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) on data collected from the adult validation cohort.

EFA Extraction and Factor Retention Criteria

Prior to factor extraction, data suitability was evaluated through the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure of sampling adequacy and Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity. The statistical metrics confirmed excellent sampling adequacy and verified that the correlation matrix was non-identity (p < 0.001), justifying factor analytic extraction.

Principal Axis Factoring and Principal Component extraction procedures were utilized to examine the latent structure of the candidate items. Both visual inspection of the scree plot (Cattell’s scree test) and Kaiser’s criterion (retaining factors with eigenvalues > 1.0) unanimously converged on a single-factor solution:

• Eigenvalue: The primary latent factor generated an initial eigenvalue of 3.40, substantially exceeding the secondary eigenvalues (all of which fell well below 1.0).
• Explained Variance: The single extracted factor accounted for 48.72% of the total cumulative variance in the observed items. In social and behavioral sciences, an explained variance approaching 50% for a brief unidimensional instrument indicates high structural parsimony and explanatory power.

Item Factor Loadings

All 7 items loaded strongly on the single underlying latent factor, with factor loadings ranging well above the standard psychometric cutoff of 0.40. No significant residual cross-loadings or structural anomalies were detected. The high homogeneity of item loadings supports the scoring protocol of calculating a single global composite score without subscale disaggregation.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Tool Name: Anthropocentric Narcissism Scale (ANS)
• Original Language: English / Turkish (validated in both linguistic forms during instrument design and adaptation studies)
• Construct Assessed: Anthropocentric Narcissism (human species-level entitlement, dominance, moral superiority, and instrumental exploitation of the natural environment)
• Instrument Type: Self-report rating scale
• Number of Items: 7 items
• Dimensionality: Unidimensional (single latent factor)
• Response Format: 7-point Likert-type scale:
  • 1 = Strongly disagree
  • 2 = Disagree
  • 3 = Somewhat disagree
  • 4 = Neither agree nor disagree (Neutral)
  • 5 = Somewhat agree
  • 6 = Agree
  • 7 = Strongly agree
• Scoring Procedures:
  • All 7 items are positively keyed; there are no reverse-coded items.
  • A total score can be derived by summing all item responses (score range: 7 to 49) or by computing a mean score across the 7 items (score range: 1.00 to 7.00).
  • Higher total or mean scores reflect a stronger endorsement of anthropocentric narcissism, species superiority, and entitlement over the natural biosphere.
• Target Population: General adult population (tested on adults aged 18 to 65 years old)
• Administration Modality: Electronic survey, computerized assessment, or traditional paper-and-pencil administration (estimated completion time: 2 to 3 minutes)

11. Permissions, Fee, and Test Year

• Test Year: 2024
• Original Publication: Global Mental Health (Cambridge University Press), Volume 11, Article e26.
• Copyright & Commercial Status: Non-commercial, open-access publication under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license.
• Fee: There are no licensing fees, usage royalties, or commercial costs required to administer this scale for academic, clinical, educational, or scientific research purposes.
• Permission: The scale items may be utilized, reproduced, and translated without formal written permission from the authors, provided that appropriate scholarly attribution and citation are accorded to the original authors (Çimşir, Şahin, & Akdoğan, 2024) and the publishing journal.

12. References

• Çimşir, E., Şahin, M. D., & Akdoğan, R. (2024). Unveiling the relationships between eco-anxiety, psychological symptoms, and anthropocentric narcissism: The psychometric properties of the Turkish version of the Hogg Eco-Anxiety Scale. Global Mental Health, 11, Article e26. https://doi.org/10.1017/gmh.2024.20
• Crowe, M. L., Lynam, D. R., Campbell, W. K., & Miller, J. D. (2019). Exploring the structure of narcissism: Toward an integrated one-factor, two-factor, and three-factor model of narcissistic traits. Journal of Personality, 87(5), 939–951. https://doi.org/10.1111/jopy.12446
• Dunlap, R. E., & Van Liere, K. D. (1978). The “New Environmental Paradigm”: A proposed measuring instrument and preliminary results. The Journal of Environmental Education, 9(4), 10–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/00958964.1978.10801875
• Dunlap, R. E., Van Liere, K. D., Mertig, A. G., & Jones, R. E. (2000). New trends in measuring environmental attitudes: Measuring endorsement of the New Ecological Paradigm: A revised NEP scale. Journal of Social Issues, 56(3), 425–442. https://doi.org/10.1111/0022-4537.00176
• Golec de Zavala, A., Cichocka, A., Eidelson, R., & Jayawickreme, N. (2009). Collective narcissism and its social consequences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97(6), 1074–1096. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0016904
• Hogg, T. L., Stanley, S. K., O’Brien, L. V., Wilson, M. S., & Watsford, C. R. (2021). The Hogg Eco-Anxiety Scale: Development and validation of a multidimensional scale. Global Environmental Change, 71, 102391. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2021.102391
• Opotow, S. (1990). Moral exclusion and injustice: An introduction. Journal of Social Issues, 46(1), 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4560.1990.tb00268.x
• Singer, P. (1975). Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals. New York Review/Random House.
• Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1986). The social identity theory of intergroup behavior. In S. Worchel & W. G. Austin (Eds.), Psychology of Intergroup Relations (pp. 7–24). Nelson-Hall.

13. Items of the Scale