Abstract
Racial implications of the narcissistic personality inventory reinterpreting popular depictions of narcissism trends
Highlights
“Dangerous trends” toward a “culture of narcissism” have been forecast from allegedly rising Narcissistic Personality Disorder among younger generations
What tangible outcomes do modern NPD trends have “to do with,” ? The overwhelming majority of citations in popular works on narcissism refer to selected personal anecdotes, incidents from “pages of magazines” and “watching TV,” and quotes from teachers and other grownups praising past and older generations as variously superior to students and other “young people today” as evidence for rising anxiety, depression, materialism, loneliness, entitlement, obsession with appearance, cynicism, alienation, external locus, and similar correlates of narcissism afflicting “Generation
This paper focuses on a question that has received little attention: do higher Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) scores among younger ages reflect their young age and deleterious modern trends, or persistently high poverty rates among the young and a growing generational gap in economic well-being? The hypothesis is that modern NPI scores, for poorly understood reasons, inadvertently capture a mix of socioeconomic, gender, racial, and age/generation factors that are not connected to clinical NPD or newly postulated “cultural narcissism.”
Summary
“Dangerous trends” toward a “culture of narcissism” have been forecast from allegedly rising Narcissistic Personality Disorder among younger generations. Comprehensive analyses show violent crime, property crime, other criminal arrest, early pregnancy, homicide, rape and sexual assault, robbery, suicide and risk-indicated fatalities and injuries, violent deaths, school dropout, and related troubles have declined sharply among children, teenagers, and young adults in recent years to among the lowest levels ever reliably recorded, while high school graduation, college enrollment, community volunteerism, and voting have risen1 [12,13,14,15] While these measures assess major outcomes and cannot address all issues allegedly related to narcissism, including subtler trends such as the increasing prevalence of unusual names or personal pronoun use [4], they do indicate that society as a whole is not succumbing to new and dire epidemics. What tangible outcomes do modern NPD trends have “to do with,” ? The overwhelming majority of citations in popular works on narcissism refer to selected personal anecdotes, incidents from “pages of magazines” and “watching TV,” and quotes from teachers and other grownups praising past and older generations as variously superior to students and other “young people today” (similar to those found in any era) as evidence for rising anxiety, depression, materialism, loneliness, entitlement, obsession with appearance, cynicism, alienation, external locus, and similar correlates of narcissism afflicting “Generation
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