By STEPHANIE ROSENBLOOM
IN each of the following pairs,
respondents are asked to choose the statement with which they agree more:
a) ³I have a natural talent for
influencing people²
b) ³I am not good at influencing
people²
a) ³I can read people like a book²
b) ³People are sometimes hard to
understand²
a) ³I am going to be a great
person²
b) ³I hope I am going to be
successful²
These are some of the 40 questions
on a popular version of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory. It may seem
like a just-for-kicks quiz on par with ³Which Superhero Are You?² but the test
is commonly used by social scientists to measure narcissistic personality
traits. (Choosing the first statement in any of the above pairings would be
scored as narcissistic.)
Conventional wisdom, supported by
academic studies using the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, maintains
that today¹s young people ‹ schooled in the church of self-esteem, vying for
spots on reality television, promoting themselves on YouTube ‹ are more
narcissistic than their predecessors. Heck, they join Facebook groups like the
Association for Justified Narcissism. A study released last year by the Pew
Research Center for the People and the Press dubbed Americans age 18 to 25 as
the ³Look at Me² generation and reported that this group said that their top
goals were fortune and fame.
³Anything we do that¹s political
always falls flat,² said Ricky Van Veen, 27, a founder and the editor in chief
of CollegeHumor.com, a popular and successful Web site. ³It doesn¹t seem like
young people now are into politics as much, especially compared to their
parents¹ generation. I think that could lend itself to the argument that there
is more narcissism and they¹re more concerned about themselves, not things
going on around them.²
Yet despite exhibiting some signs
of self-obsession, young Americans are not more self-absorbed than
earlier generations, according to new research challenging the prevailing
wisdom.
Some scholars point out that
bemoaning the self-involvement of young people is a perennial adult
activity. (³The children now love luxury,² Plato wrote 2,400 years ago. ³They
have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and
love chatter in place of exercise.²) Others warn that if young people continue
to be labeled selfish and narcissistic, they just might live up to that
reputation.
³There¹s a self-fulfilling
prophecy,² said Kali H. Trzesniewski, an assistant professor of psychology at
the University of Western Ontario. Ms. Trzesniewski, along with colleagues at
the University of California, Davis, and Michigan State University, will
publish research in the journal Psychological Science next month showing there
have been very few changes in the thoughts, feelings and behaviors of youth
over the last 30 years. In other words, the minute-by-minute Twitter broadcasts
of today are the navel-gazing est seminars of 1978.
Ms. Trzesniewski said her study is
a response to widely publicized research by Jean Twenge, an associate professor
of psychology at San Diego State University, who along with colleagues has
found that narcissism is much more prevalent among people born in the
1980s than in earlier generations. Ms. Twenge¹s book title summarizes the
research: ³Generation Me: Why Today¹s Young Americans Are More Confident,
Assertive, Entitled ‹ and More Miserable Than Ever Before² (2006, Free Press).
Ms. Twenge attributed her findings
in part to a change in core cultural beliefs that arose when baby-boom parents
and educators fixated on instilling self-esteem in children beginning in
the ¹70s. ³We think feeling good about yourself is very, very important,² she
said in an interview. ³Well, that never used to be the case back in the ¹50s
and ¹60s, when people thought about ŒWhat do we need to teach young people?¹ ²
She points to cultural sayings as well ‹ ³believe in yourself and anything is
possible² and ³do what¹s right for you.² ³All of them are narcissistic,² she
said.
³Generation Me² inspired a slew of articles in the popular press with headlines like ³It¹s all about me,² ³Superflagilistic, Extra Egotistic² and ³Big Babies: Think the Boomers are self-absorbed? Wait until you meet their kids.²
Ms. Twenge is working on another
book with W. Keith Campbell of the University of Georgia, this one tentatively
called ³The Narcissism Epidemic.²
However, some scholars argue that
a spike in selfishness among young people is, like the story of Narcissus, a
myth.
³It¹s like a cottage industry of
putting them down and complaining about them and whining about why they don¹t
grow up,² said Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, a developmental psychologist, referring
to young Americans. Mr. Arnett, the author of ³Emerging Adulthood: The Winding
Road From the Late Teens through the Twenties² (2004, Oxford University Press),
has written a critique of Ms. Twenge¹s book, which is to be published in the
American Journal of Psychology.
Scholars including Mr. Arnett
suggest several reasons why the young may be perceived as having increased
narcissistic traits. These include the personal biases of older adults, the
lack of nuance in the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, changing social
norms, the news media¹s emphasis on celebrity, and the rise of social
networking sites that encourage egocentricity.
Richard P. Eibach, an assistant
professor of psychology at Yale, has found that exaggerated beliefs in social
decline are widespread ‹ largely because people tend to mistake changes in
themselves for changes in the external world. ³Our automatic assumption is
something real has changed,² Mr. Eibach said. ³It takes extra thought to
realize that something about your own perspective or the information you¹re
receiving may have changed.²
Ms. Trzesniewski gave as an example of this bias a scene from the film ³Knocked Up,² in which new parents drive their baby home from the hospital at a snail¹s pace. The road, of course, is no more or less dangerous than before the couple became mother and father. But once they make that life transition, they perceive the journey as perilous.
Indeed, the transition to
parenthood, increased responsibility and physical aging are examples of changes
in individuals that tend to be the real sources of people¹s perceptions of the
moral decline of others, write Mr. Eibach and Lisa K. Libby of Ohio State
University in a psychology book chapter exploring the ³ideology of the Good Old
Days,² to be published by Oxford University Press later this year. (They also
report that perceptions of social decline tend to be associated with
conservative attitudes.)
Ms. Twenge and Ms. Trzesniewski
used the inventory in their studies, though they chose different data sets and
had opposite conclusions. Each said their data sets were better than the
other¹s for a host of reasons ‹ all good, but far too long to list here. Ms.
Twenge, who has read Ms. Trzesniewski¹s critique, said she stands by her own
nationwide analysis and has a comprehensive response, along with another paper,
forthcoming in the Journal of Personality. It reads in part, ³their critique
ultimately strengthens our case that narcissism has risen over the generations
among college students.²
Mr. Arnett dismisses tests like
the inventory. ³They have very limited validity,² he said. ³They don¹t really
get at the complexity of peoples¹ personality.² Some of the test choices (³I
see myself as a good leader²) ³sound like pretty normal personality features,²
he said.
Ms. Twenge said she understands
that sentiment but that the inventory has consistently proved to be an
accurate measure. (She calls it ³the boyfriend test.²) ³There¹s a fair number
of personality tests that when you look at them they may seem odd, but what¹s
important is what they predict,² she said.
Test or no test, Mr. Arnett
worries that ³youth bashing² has become so common that accomplishments tend to
be forgotten, like the fact that young people today have a closer relationship
with their parents than existed between children and their parents in the 1960s
(³They really understand things from their parents¹ perspective,² Mr. Arnett
said), or that they popularized the alternative spring break in which a student
opts to spend a vacation helping people in a third world country instead of
chugging 40s in Cancún.
³It¹s the development of a new life stage between adolescence and adulthood,² Mr. Arnett said. ³It¹s a temporary condition of being self-focused, not a permanent generational characteristic.²
Essay:
In a 300 word essay that uses
examples from this article, find two reasons why your generation is ³better²
than my generation.