The Dispicable "Me Generation"

Forums: Childhood, Ego, Adulthood, Narcissism
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I often read those "kids these days are awful" threads here and I hear those comments in real life. I always thought people who said that kind of thing just didn't remember what they were like as kids.

I came across an interesting study that props up my belief. The study was a meta-analysis of other studies on narcissism.

Quote:

....If people decrease an entire standard deviation as they
age, then it is not surprising that many middle-aged and older
individuals would find younger people to be narcissistic. Comparatively
speaking, they are. Furthermore, the age differences
in narcissism may be easily confused with generational
changes in narcissism. The distinction between younger people
being more narcissistic than older people and younger people
being more narcissistic than previous generations is probably
too subtle to detect (Ozer, 1993). In turn, when older people are
told that younger people are getting increasingly narcissistic they may be prone to agree because they confuse the claim for
generational change with the fact that younger people are
simply more narcissistic than they are. The confusion leads
to an increased likelihood that older individuals will agree
with the Generation Me argument despite its lack of empirical
support.....

http://faculty.las.illinois.edu/bwroberts/publications/documents/RobertsEdmondsGrijalva2010Developmentalme.pdf

This makes perfect sense to me.

What do you think?

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Type: Question • Score: 5 • Views: 2,290 • Replies: 13

[+3] - sozobe - 02/03/2011Yep. I've been arguing against "kids today" since I was a kid (literally, I had a kid's advocacy group when I was like 8), and have kept doing it through 2-3 generations, depending on...

@boomerang,

I agree with the results. Younger people are more narcissistic.

1 Reply

@boomerang,

Yep.

I've been arguing against "kids today" since I was a kid (literally, I had a kid's advocacy group when I was like 8), and have kept doing it through 2-3 generations, depending on how you count. (I'm 40.)

I think there's also a selective amnesia thing, where one's own childhood is usually tinted a bit rosier than it really was. There are studies about that too, can try to find them back.

2 Replies

@boomerang,

I think, plus ça change, plus c'est le même chose. Almost 3,000 years ago, the Greek writer Hesiod wrote:

Quote:

I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words... When I was young, we were taught to be discreet and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly disrespectful and impatient of restraint.

0 Replies

@sozobe,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_memory_biases

Quote:

Fading affect bias: a bias in which the emotion associated with unpleasant memories fades more quickly than the emotion associated with positive events.[2].
Hindsight bias: the inclination to see past events as being predictable; also called the "I-knew-it-all-along" effect.
...
Mood congruent memory bias: the improved recall of information congruent with one's current mood.
...
Positivity effect: that older adults favor positive over negative information in their memories.
...
Rosy retrospection: the remembering of the past as having been better than it really was.

Remembering the Good Times, Putting the Bad Times in Perspective – How Our Memory Helps Make Life Pleasant

Quote:

two causes for people's recollection of the past to be positively biased. The first cause, according to their review of the research, seems to be due to the simple fact that pleasant events do in fact outnumber unpleasant events because people seek out positive experiences and avoid negative ones. ...

The other process at work involves our memory system treating pleasant emotions differently from unpleasant emotions. Seven studies reviewed by the researchers provide support for a fading affect for negative emotions. Pleasant emotions have been found to fade more slowly from our memory than unpleasant emotions. One mechanism for this uneven fading may involve a process known as minimization. In order to return to our normal level of happiness, we try to minimize the impact of life events. This minimization process - which occurs biologically, cognitively and socially -- is usually stronger for negative events than for positive events.

1 Reply

@boomerang,

boomerang wrote:

Quote:
then it is not surprising that many middle-aged and older individuals would find younger people to be narcissistic. Comparatively speaking, they are.

of course, there's a nice double whammy

they are more narcissistic - and they're perceived to be even more narcissistic because of the memory factor

awesome

hard to win

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@DrewDad,

Thanks!

0 Replies

@ehBeth,

I think it also holds true for the elderly when their worlds shrink, they don't have many people to talk with, and when they do, all they have to share are their complaints about ailments and how life isn't as good as it used to be.

1 Reply

@Butrflynet,

Are you saying that you think that there are years where our narcissism wanes and then it comes back?

That's an interesting thought!

A person's world is pretty small when they're young, then it expands, and it keeps expanding until it starts to shrink again.....

Hmmmmmm.

1 Reply

@sozobe,

sozobe wrote:

Yep.

I've been arguing against "kids today" since I was a kid (literally, I had a kid's advocacy group when I was like 8), and have kept doing it through 2-3 generations, depending on how you count. (I'm 40.)

It has always seemed to me,
and I always argued it, that a citizen of ANY age
has a moral right to vote, if he wants to.
There is an indissoluble bond between
the right of a citizen to vote and his moral duty to comply with the law.

David

1 Reply

@OmSigDAVID,

Yes, that was one of my issues! I was really, really ticked that I couldn't vote. Laughing

That said, I don't actually think kids should vote. They're way too easily swayed by their parents to have a "real" (independent) vote. Their brains are plain different -- not just small adults. (Sorry, 8-yr-old me.)

2 Replies

@sozobe,

I worked, volunteered, in political campaigns
and I was animated in arguing the merits.
I was very offended at my being disenfranchized. I took it as an insult.

A few years ago (2008?) I was standing in line,
waiting to vote along with a woman and her son
who looked about 12. He said that he was irate
about his disenfranchizement. I told him that if it were up to ME, he coud freely vote.

During my childhood, I had a greater influence
in convincing my parents qua voting (thay were Roosevelt Democrats)
than vice-versa, when eventually I got the vote at 21, in those days.

David

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@boomerang,

For the most part, yes.

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@sozobe,

sozobe wrote:

Yes, that was one of my issues!
I was really, really ticked that I couldn't vote.

That was very anti-democratic.
What happened to "equal protection of the laws" ??

sozobe wrote:

That said, I don't actually think kids should vote. They're way too easily swayed by their parents to have a "real" (independent) vote. Their brains are plain different -- not just small adults. (Sorry, 8-yr-old me.)

How r their brains different ?

0 Replies

The Dispicable "Me Generation"

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