Me, Myself and I

A new study has proclaimed today's college students "more narcissistic than ever."

The study was done by five shrinks, who examined responses from over 16,000 respondents between 1982 and 2006 on a written personality test called the Narcissistic Personality Inventory. If you Google it, you’ll see that the NPI was published in 1979 and has hundreds of paired statements, one reflecting narcissistic traits and other reflecting non-narcissistic traits. The person taking the test chooses which of the two statements they agree with. The results are tabulated and according to the definitions and standards of the NPI, they gage the subject’s overall level of narcissism.

Regardless of the validity of the NPI, the results are pretty eye opening. According to the test, two-thirds of subjects have ‘above average’ narcissism scores, a 30% jump from 1982. The main point is that there’s been a highly significant trend in the increasing percentage of college students scoring ‘above average’ on the test.

I was an Industrial/Organizational Psychology student in my graduate years and have been a college Residence Hall Directors during and since then. I always have been very skeptical regarding the validity of all those paper-pencil tests taken by college students, but, you can’t argue with the base conclusion. I see it every day myself.

Narcissistic Personality Disorder is defined as (according to the DSM) “a pattern of grandiosity (exaggerated claims to talents, importance, or specialness) in the patient’s private fantasies or outward behavior, a need for constant admiration from others; and a lack of empathy for others.” The study says that narcissists “are more likely to have romantic relationships that are short-lived, at a higher risk for infidelity, lack emotional warmth and to exhibit game-playing, dishonesty and over-controlling and violent behaviors.”

As a Resident Director at various academic institutions for years now, I can say it pretty much does an effective job of capturing much of the essence of our youth culture of today, especially as reflected (and indeed created) by the mass media and Hollywood.

What alarms me most is what’s in store for our future. The children my wife and I meet with on a daily basis are severely emotionally stunted. They have absolutely zero ability to resolve conflict (a student came up to tell me that another student had taken a number 2 in the bathroom and refused to flush it and that I should do something), poor communication skills, an insatiable ability to sensationalize even the most trivial of matters and can be at times entirely vicious towards others.

I sometimes wonder if my Residents have ever been told ‘no’ in their lives. Roommate disputes sometimes involve Parents. And increasingly Lawyers are becoming involved. All over the fact that someone left their hair-straightener on. Roommates have fights not person to person, but on AOL Instant Messenger, sitting no less than four feet from each other.

In perhaps the most recent incident of the incredible levels of narcissism I’ve seen in our college aged youth; I recently had the opportunity to judge a Karaoke competition on campus with a few other administrators.

You’d think Karaoke would be a giant funfest, with people making fun of themselves, or at least having the ability to do so. I know I would never take anything I did seriously while singing “Return of the Mack” on the mic.

Not these girls.

The first act approached us during the intermission asking why their scores were lower (they were actually higher). Before I could squeeze and answer out (I didn’t even remember the score I gave them, that’s how little I cared about it), I was asked if I gave them a low score because they were black. No joke. It didn’t end there.

Another act came up on stage and sang Pat Benetar’s “Love is a Battlefield”. Well, not really sing. In fact, she didn’t know any of the words, so she did what comes to mind whenever any of hear Pat Benetar, and that was to whip out those glow stick thingies and whip them around. She was also dressed like Mrs. Jetson and Bob Marley’s rape baby. She was awful and the first judge said so, and she ran off stage crying.

The last round of the night featured a pick a number, get a random song format. One of the finalists received “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” by Cindy Lauper. She was a girl who attends and all-girls school. She fumbled over a few of the words despite the audience literally singing (err, screaming) the entire song along with her. Well, one of the judges said she should probably know the song, because as most any reasonable adult male above 35 would figure, it’s sort of a late teenage girl ‘anthem’ (as he deemed it). She called him a sexist and broke down crying.

Again, all true stories.

Despite all of that, I am at odds with a few assumptions within the study. The main source of my disagreement is that they state that the roots of the increase in narcissism are found in the ‘self-esteem movement’ of the 1980s. They’re quite right to take a shot at the educational establishment, who’ve completely lost their minds altogether, and should be held fully responsible for the empty, vacuous ‘self esteem’ education we have to deal with today. However, I feel the true source of American narcissism is the liberation movements of the 1960s.

The core ideas of the 1960s counter-culture movement emphasized individual ‘freedom’, ‘personal growth’ and utopian dreams of a ‘new’ and ‘better world’. When these ideas were applied in real practice, they resulted in promiscuous sex, drug use, violent rebellion against the so called ‘bourgeois lifestyle of family, work and patriotism’, all while managing to leave self responsibility rolling in the dirt somewhere back in Albuquerque. It was all about doing what ‘felt good’. The self-esteem movement is an offshoot of this and as a result, it has produced the fine young ladies I got to judge during that Karaoke contest.

It is easy for anyone not enamored with "the Age of Aquarius" to see that today's youth merely reflect the shallow and selfish worldview bequeathed to them by their parents' generation. I have talked about narcissism on this blog frequently because I feel it’s what is driving our culture into the ground, but I feel the problem is a shade deeper.

Despite that, I don’t know if narcissism on its own is really the biggest problem in American culture today. We’ve always had narcissists. They’re usually so busy talking about themselves that they never really have much of an opportunity to do anything detrimental to society. The biggest problem is a mutated form of narcissism I like to call ‘hyper-narcissism’.

Hyper-Narcissism is when narcissism becomes dangerous. It’s when people mask their narcissism with altruism. It’s a graduated form of what I discussed above and has manifested itself all throughout our culture at the micro and macro level.

I remember sitting through a plethora of college leadership programs and workshops in both my graduate and undergraduate years. Nearly all of them ended in the same thing; some dumb-ass crying about how ‘amazing’ everyone was, how they ‘were impacted in so many ways’ by people they met two hours ago, etc. None of that sobbing and ‘thanking’ was really ‘thanking’. It was saying nice things about other people in order to hear more nice things about themselves. It was a tit for tat game with the person getting the most compliments getting bragging rights.

Even as a Resident Director and a graduate student, I was amazed at how co-workers desperately tried to validate the importance of themselves through other people and procedure. In one meeting, over RA awards, Directors would literally maul each other ‘advocating’ for their employee. Really, it wasn’t ever about the employee getting the award; it was about the RD looking like a great supervisor because their employee got the award.

In today’s world, if self-worship was a religion, it would be unprecedented in size. Senator Chuck Hagel (R-Nebraska) held a press conference last week to tell us that he had nothing to tell us. Governor Deval Patrick literally sought out the media to let everyone know his wife had depression. And in the latest act of political vanity, President John Edwards called a press conference and then scheduled a 60-Minutes interview to tell us all about his wife’s battle with cancer. Why? “Because we wanted everyone to hear it from us.” They said. A press release would have done fine. That way people know but it’s not in a flaunted manner. But nope, it was an excuse to get in front of the TV camera so ‘their supporters’ could hear it ‘from them’. Give me a break.

In nearly all of these cases, we have people justifying their egomaniacal behavior in the name of doing something good for others. Here’s where we as a culture are beginning to walk a slippery slope and literally consume itself from within. It seems everything is geared towards us nowadays. You Tube. My Space. We cannot have a government that is based on individual beauty contests and not on the common good.

We’ve kicked many bad habits in the past as a culture, but can we kick ourselves?