An emerging epidemic of narcissism or much ado about nothing?

Abstract

We evaluated secular increases in narcissism in light of issues raised by Twenge and Foster (2008) [Twenge and Foster (2008). Mapping the scale of the narcissism epidemic: Increases in narcissism 2002–2007 within ethnic groups. Journal of Research in Personality]. Year of data collection (1996–2008) and narcissism scores were weakly correlated in a sample of 30,073 participants ( rs ranged from 0.019 to 0.044). The effect sizes were well below the conventional threshold for a “small” effect. Based on these and previous findings, we concluded that there is little evidence of a secular increase in narcissism in our datasets.