We've been hearing a lot about that there's an epidemic of narcissism in society. One psychologist who got the ball rolling on that claim, Jean M Twenge, is being criticized by fellow psychologists for basically reading far too much into everything:
I guess I'm a narcissist then!
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/06/science/seeing-narcissists-everywhere.html?pagewanted=all
I think people who complain that there is too much narcissism in our society don't really understand what narcissism is. Narcissists have fragile self-esteem and make up for it by projecting an image to others, and going to great lengths making sure everyone sees that image and not the weak ego underneath.
I do agree that the self-esteem movement in our society is silly because it really does not help anyone develop self reliance and confidence. But other than that, I think the belief that young people (30 and younger) are selfish narcissists is absurd. Besides, don't all older generations accuse younger people as being like that?
“I think she is vastly misinterpreting or over-interpreting the data, and I think it’s destructive,” said Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, a research professor in psychology at Clark University. “She is inviting ridicule for a group of people about which there are already negative stereotypes.”
Critics like Dr. Arnett see a number of problems with Dr. Twenge’s work. They say the test on which much of her research is based, the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, is inherently flawed — better designed to measure feelings of confidence and self-worth than actual narcissism. They also accuse her of focusing too much of her work on students at research universities, who they say are not representative of their generation.
And some critics are even more emphatic: they say the data, if collected and read correctly, simply show no generational difference in narcissism. “We calculated self-esteem scores from 1976 all the way up to 2006,” said Brent Donnellan, a psychologist at Michigan State University, referring to his and colleagues’ 2010 study using data from an annual national survey of high school students called Monitoring the Future, “and we didn’t see much difference at all.”
Dr. Twenge, who defends her work fervently, says the only reason she chose to focus on narcissism in the first place was that she followed the data. “The truth is I just started studying generations and tried to get my hands on as many scales and as much data as possible,” she said, “and that’s the theme that emerged.
Much of the disagreement between Dr. Twenge and her critics comes down to interpretation. She believes that questions like “I am assertive” and “I like to take responsibility for making decisions” are indicators of narcissism; Dr. Arnett calls them “well within the range of normal personality,” and possibly even “desirable traits.”
I guess I'm a narcissist then!
It is with this sort of evidence that Dr. Arnett — a passionate defender of the socially networked “iGeneration,” which he says is more thoughtful and civic-minded than its predecessors — raises his loudest opposition. In the March issue of Emerging Adulthood, he used a combination of the Donnellan and Trzesniewski studies and a barrage of cultural statistics to suggest that the dire warnings of a rise in selfishness were baseless.
Crime rates have fallen, he notes, as have incidents of teenage pregnancy and car accidents. “If narcissism is increasing and narcissism leads to selfish behavior,” Dr. Arnett said in a telephone interview, “then you would expect all these things to get worse. But instead they’ve gotten better.”
Dr. Twenge agrees that such statistics might seem to contradict her results. But ultimately she dismisses them. “I know of no study linking narcissism and car accidents,” she said, and “nobody knows why crime goes down.”
Ask Dr. Twenge to defend her conclusions often enough, and you are bound to elicit a reminder. “People think I’m saying all millennials are selfish,” she said. “Of course I’m not saying that. I’m saying here’s on average what the data show. This is a problem that anybody who does research on group differences runs into.”
She will also remind you not to shoot the messenger. “Some people just want to be positive about the future and about young people, and I understand that,” she said. “But that means sometimes they just want to cover their eyes and ears and don’t want to listen to anything negative, and I think that’s misguided.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/06/science/seeing-narcissists-everywhere.html?pagewanted=all
I think people who complain that there is too much narcissism in our society don't really understand what narcissism is. Narcissists have fragile self-esteem and make up for it by projecting an image to others, and going to great lengths making sure everyone sees that image and not the weak ego underneath.
I do agree that the self-esteem movement in our society is silly because it really does not help anyone develop self reliance and confidence. But other than that, I think the belief that young people (30 and younger) are selfish narcissists is absurd. Besides, don't all older generations accuse younger people as being like that?