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January 17, 2008Do Today's Young people Really Think They Are so Extraordinary? |
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From EurekAlert! - Breaking News: An article appearing in the February issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, found no evidence that today's young people have inflated impressions of themselves compared to the youth of previous generations. Psychologist Kali Trzesniewski of the University of Western Ontario and her colleagues Brent Donnellan and Richard Robins measured narcissism --- a personality trait encompassing characteristics like arrogance, exhibitionism, and a sense of entitlement --- in over 25,000 college students from 1996 to 2007. Levels of "self-enhancement" --- the tendency to hold unrealistically positive beliefs about the self --- were also assessed in a sample of high school seniors. As with college students, the high school seniors showed no prominent increase on this component of narcissism. "Today's youth seem to be no more narcissistic and self-aggrandizing than previous generations," write the authors. The findings run counter to previous research and media reports claiming that narcissism has been steadily increasing among college students, leading some behavioral scientists to dub today's youth as "generation me." But it appears, at least for now, that the youth of American have won a reprieve from being scolded as more aloof and self-involved than previous generations. Psychological Science is ranked among the top 10 general psychology journals for impact by the Institute for Scientific Information. For a copy of the article "Do Today's Young People Really Think They Are So Extraordinary" An Examination of Secular Trends in Narcissism and Self-Enhancement" and access to other Psychological Science research findings, please contact Catherine West at (202) 783-2077 or cwest@psychologicalscience.org.
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