Narcisism in the new generation

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The first test is so crude that it is hardly worth mentioning. Straight Nos across the board for me with the results being that I am sane.

On the second test I scored low on everything except avoidant which I ranked moderate in - so basically it is saying that I am sane but kind of shy.

Overall on this issue I think that there is nothing to be worried about. I suspect that most of the change in results can be attributed mostly to change in vocabulary and not in the way people actually act. Today we basically define special so that everyone is special by which we mean they are unique individuals not that they have entitlements beyond anyone else. As such people are willing to say that they are special on this sort of test.

People who say that things/people/whatever were better back in the good old days are just looking back at things with rose coloured glasses. The crime rates in North America are a perfect example of this. Ask almost any old timer and they will say that things used to be better and that there is so much more violent crime these days. The crime rates show exactly the opposite.

[ March 08, 2007, 20:24: Message edited by: JSBB ]

 

JSBB, I love your post. Somewhere I have a book titled "The Good Old Days They Weren't so Good" or something like that.

It primarily covers New York City at the turn of the 20th century. Does touch a bit on life in the country.

Outside of dirt, crime, child labor, poverty, disease, fires, all that sort of thing, life was great. Sure people were more 'humble'. Speak up to your betters and you were in trouble.

Try asking this 'old timer' if things were better in 1950. Oh, I forgot I was part of the generation. We were an arrogant bunch of kids.

 

Some of the questions from the second test linked by Carceroth... and just how stupid they are.

"Are you plagued by suspicions that other people, including loved ones, may be doing things behind your back that will end up hurting you?" Plagued? Occasionally someone has done something behind my back that has ended up hurting me, I'm certain someone is possibly doing something I don't know about that will come back to bite me in the ass. Is it intentional, I highly doubt it. But I still suspect it's happening, I don't live in a world of flowers where we all fart rainbows.

"Do you consider your needs to be more important to you than the needs of others?" Well of course your needs are more important to you than the needs of others. They're your NEEDS if you fail to fulfill them you DIE. It's not narcistic to have a survival trait.

And at the end of this test apparently I am...

Moderately histrionic...

And this is as far from the truth as you can get. I never interrupt people in conversations, I never try and dominate conversations (that's just boring, I might as well have a monologue), I enjoy praise, I do hope to be praised for my actions but who doesn't?, I've never pretended to be sick or anything to seek attention and I'm 100% certain that not everyone loves me...

Eh...

 

I think that's more of an intellectual question. It isn't a question of whether or not you'll throw yourself in front of a truck in order to save the life of a complete stranger. Intellectually, I *know* that my needs are no more important than anyone else's. I'd like to think I'd risk my life for the stranger, but life has (thankfully) never given me the opportunity to test the assumption.

 

What about rising levels of indignity?

...

Humanity has been trending 'better' for all of time. We learn and pass it on. It is what makes us human.

 

Ok, I feel like there's still some misunderstanding. First of all, of the two tests, the second is much closer, but the real test is officially liscensed by the APA (American Psychological Association) and I seriously doubt you'll find anywhere that offers it for free. Psychologists can charge hudnreds of dollars for giving, scoring, and interpreting that test.

Second of all, each personality feature is not an on/of switch, or even something to be broken down into three grading levels (low, moderate, high). It occurs in a spectrum from one extreme to the other. I really think body weight is the best analogy. BMI (Body Mass Index) rates between Anorexia (VERY thin) to Obesity (VERY fat) as the two extremes. Very few people live (or die in this case) at either extreme, and most people exist somewhere in the middle, at what could be called a '0 range' (in the middle between a positive number of fatness and a negative number of thinness).

This Absolute Zero would be the Ideal BMI, but healty stretches to a long way on either side, and indeed it would take a group of doctors engaging in a lengthy examination and debate of one person to decide exactly where it becomes unhealthy for that individual. Instead, they came up with an average scoring system, which has things like Overweight, Obese, Severly Obese, etc. These are given almost arbitrary number ranges, and certain ones are listed as serious medical conditions while others aren't. A doctor may tell you, though, that you need to medically worry about one that isn't a 'serious medical condition', or that you don't need to worry about one that is, because the system is generalized (though to error on the side of caution).

What I'm saying is that you have to be a certain ammount narcisisstic becore you get labeled with narcisisstic personality disorder. On top of that, certain things that add points to the narcisisstic scale, like "I am special", are healty and good, and not having them would be a sign of another problem, but the issue is that more and more college students are scoring higher and higher.

It would be like if the news reported that college students are becoming more obese. It isn't to say that a lot of them are dangerously overweight, just that there has been a steady trend of increasing weight observed over the past X years.

 

As stated before without seeing the actual test I can not make a judgement on it or its conclusions.

However I am sceptical of medical/psychological conclusions reported casually in the news. I will use myself as an example in connection with the following. The news reports that Diabetes is on the rise at least in the USA. What it fails to report is that in the 90's the AMA lowered the threshold at which one is considered diabetic. I believe it was 1997 but am not sure. When I was 18 I learned that I had fluctuating blood sugar but was not considered diabetic. At 60 I was told I was diabetic. Which actually was a relief to me because I could now get some help. The change was not in me but in the testing.

Now the article referenced states that Narcissism is on the rise in College students. What about the population in general? If it is rising only in the younger generation why is it rising? How extreme is the narcissism? IMO the article raises more questions than it answers.

I ran a Google search on narcissistic and narcissism and came up with a possible 2,800,000 links. Many I'm sure are duplicates but that is still a lot of discussion.

As to revmaf's post: as an ex-teacher I know that reward and punishment work much better than telling a child "You have the capability to do better". That alone certainly carried no weight. I had the equivalent of 'C' students who should have been 'A' students. They did the minimum amount of work and that was that. I also had less gifted children who worked hard and did at least 'B' work and even 'A' work. And were rewarded with honors when the year was over. Fear of failure and the expectation of recognition and reward work wonders except for those who know they can get away with doing a minimal amount of work.

 

No idea. Probably not. I would rather test it on a small community first and short-term, to avoid damage.

Yes, but isn't everyone?

Perhaps I materially can, but there are obligations, there are laws, there is morality, there are other things which dictate a certain course, and ends surely don't justify means.

Yes, unfortunately. Focusing on oneself prevents the focus on the other person. A relationship is great when each of the two is focusing on the other, not when two people are focusing on themselves and cooperating in it. Additionally, remember the Saint-Exupery quote? "To love is not to look at each other, but to look in the same direction."

Yep. Just look around. It's so prevalent I can trace some of it in myself, even though I oppose it.

Yup. The prevailing trend.

http://towerofivory.net/writing.php?disp=whsi4#text

First they make sexual revolution, whatever else revolution, and tons of hurraliberalism, and then they complain about children going the wrong way. Look to adults first.

:S That's troubling. I have yet to discover in what way, but it is.

Now, in the old tradition of, "the answers are already here, one just needs to see the obvious:"

The problem is relative morality and the lack of objective values and absolute truth. A relative approach to values leads to elevation of career, self-comfort, wealth, good material/educational situation as values on their own, in competition with real values. That makes people consider morality ultimately inferior to "real life concerns" and between morality and practicality, morality is expected to concede. That, however, leads to results which are hardly practical. Making tons of compromises with one's morality, principles, beliefs, cannot avoid having an effect on one's personality. And spiritual health. It won't make anyone happy. Also, as moral principles are seen as relative, they generally lose their inherent value and there is always the temptation to "adjust" them, as they are believed to depend on the choice of the person following them. Thing is, if you remove moral absolutes and objectives, your egoistic goals will likely become your absolutes and whatever's moral will come secondary.

Combatting religion and driving it out of public life, also, progressively, even private lives of people, has also had a hand.

 

Chev,

That defies logic.

According to MSN's Encarta's dictionary 'special' means: "unusual or better: distinct, different, unusual, or superior in comparison to others of the same kind". Marriam-Webster defines it as: "distinguished by some unusual quality; especially : being in some way superior <our special blend>"

So in brief 'special' means unlike the average. Now everybody being 'unlike the average' merely changes what's exactly average. Per definition, it cannot be that everyone is special. To claim otherwise is well-meant nonsense

 

This statement can easily apply to anyone. Every person is abnormal in some way. I, for example, have an unusually large......uh......ego. It's my.....uh......ego that makes me special.

 

@Rags: Unusual qualities apply to everyone. The average state is an artificial construct based more or less on arithmetical calculation of the mean point. Everyone is superior to someone else in some regard and inferior in some other. Distinct and different I trust you have no problem with.

Therefore the claim that everyone is special has merit in the context that everyone has his special qualities and something to make him stand out in some way, plus that everyone matters. It would lack merit if you tried to see everyone as a natural leader, talented artist, exceptional scholar, holy person, magnificent strategist and/or whatever else, which is indeed nonsense.

 

If I ruled the world, it would be a better place.

Well, maybe. I'd like to give it a try, but I'd like a lot of failsafes and backups.

I think I am a special person.

Yes. Most certainly yes. You have no idea just how 'special' I am.

I can live my life any way I want to.

Absolutely not. My life is one surrendered to Christ, and the ways I want to live are not the ways He wants me to live. On top of that, I've seen the results of how I want to live in others, and it usually isn't life.

 

@ Ragusa

Or perhaps nobody is 'average'?

If there are four people, two of whom are 4's, and two of whom are 6's, you will find no 5's despite that being what all four participants would claim as "normal".

Now what if there were so many people that it was impossible for the participants to even see the entire sample set? You would have different participants with different notions of 'average'...

....

"All people funny...you funny too!"

 

Nakia said:

Excellent point. I think, in fact, narcissism IS on the rise in the population in general. Don't try to tell me that the boomers who pay nearly $50,000 for a mattress (as reported in the local paper this morning) aren't a bit me-oriented.

And I agree that we're talking about a continuum here, not a yes/no.

One more geezer reminiscence - back almost thirty years ago, when I was a police officer in a college town, it was always amusing to arrest students who were stunned to be held accountable for things like, oh, smashing a car windshield for the fun of it. And that, I repeat, was thirty years ago. Maybe those now fifty-year-olds have become less narcissistic, but I have doubts.

 

LNT, Chev

If that would be so, then the claim that everybody is special would be premature to say the least, because a determination what the average is cannot be properly made. If you don't know what average is, how can you say someone is special? Calling someone special is an empirical judgement.

Any mother faced with the question by a child: 'Mom, am I special?' should correctly reply: 'Sorry darling, but I fear the sample group is too small to allow for a definite judgement on your special-ness! Can we agree on you being peculiar?'

 

@ Ragusa

How about, "My child, though everyone may not see you in the same light that I do, to me, you are the most special person in the world."

...

I've been giving this a bit of thought. Lately, I have been spending a lot of time playing with the notion of 'perspective'.

I think everyone has a little model of themselves inside their head. An observer cannot truly observe itself, so, the model is just that, a model, and not entirely accurate. The observer will react to this 'object', the mental model of themself, in the same way they would to any other perception---they will have feelings generated by the observation.

A person doesn't just enjoy the sound of their own voice, they also enjoy listening to the internal model of their voice.

Here is the thing: the feelings generated in a separate observer by the actual voice, and the feelings generated by the listener to the internal model of the voice can by quite different.

But feeling good feels good, and it can be quite hard to give up things which feel good, so rather than change the internal model of the voice, the person will instead discount or remove the separate observer. That person's opinion no longer counts because it hurts for it to do so.

That process can be quite painful for both people involved.

[ March 09, 2007, 18:43: Message edited by: Late-Night Thinker ]

 

LNT,
now your variant sounds quite sensible. But also, admittedly, sort of lame

 

Hey man, we all love Mom.

 

True.