Collective Narcissism: Americans Exaggerate the Role of Their Home State in Appraising U.S. History

Abstract

Collective narcissism-a phenomenon in which individuals show excessively high regard for their own group-is ubiquitous in studies of small groups. We examined how Americans from the 50 U.S. states ( N = 2,898) remembered U.S. history by asking them, "In terms of percentage, what do you think was your home state's contribution to the history of the United States?" The mean state estimates ranged from 9% (Iowa) to 41% (Virginia), with the total contribution for all states equaling 907%, indicating strong collective narcissism. In comparison, ratings provided by nonresidents for states were much lower (but still high). Surprisingly, asking people questions about U.S. history before they made their judgment did not lower estimates. We argue that this ethnocentric bias is due to ego protection, selective memory retrieval processes involving the availability heuristic, and poor statistical reasoning. This study shows that biases that influence individual remembering also influence collective remembering.

Collective Narcissism: Political Consequences of Investing Self‐Worth in the Ingroup’s Image

“…The concept of collective narcissism extends to the social level of self; the concept of individual narcissism understood as a desire for continual external validation of an inflated self‐view (Crocker & Park, ; Emmons, ; Horney, ; Morf & Rhodewalt, ; Raskin & Terry, ; Rhodewalt & Morf, ; Rhodewalt & Sorrow, ). The concept of collective narcissism is inspired by the literature indicating that the beliefs people hold about themselves (e.g., such as a belief about their self‐worth, that is, self‐esteem, Crocker & Luhtanen, ; Gramzow & Gaertner, ; Luhtanen & Crocker, ; self‐discrepancy, Bizman & Yinon, ; Bizman, Yinon, & Krotman, ; or self‐serving bias, Hornsey, ; Putnam, Ross, Soter, & Roediger, ; Zaromb, Liu, Hanke, Putnam, Roediger III, & Páez, ) have their parallels on the social level of self. As much as people can demand special recognition and privilege for themselves (as individual narcissists do), they can claim the same for the groups they belong to (as collective narcissists do).…”

A cognitively-gated place? The role of need for closure in a biased perception of the place’s past

“…Lewicka refers to this biased perception of place's past as Bhistorical ethnocentric bias^. Recent research has shown that e.g., Americans tend to overestimate the significance of their home state in the U.S. history (Putnam et al 2018), and a similar phenomenon was shown in a study on the perceived contribution of one's home country to world history (Zaromb et al 2018).…”

“…Numerous studies have shown that individuals' estimations of their own responsibility for an ingroup's output sums up to more than 100%, which is logically impossible (e.g., Schroeder et al 2016;Thompson and Kelley 1981). Similar biases can apply to collective entities such as ethnic groups or nations, influencing the assessment of the group's role in shaping the history of the community of which they are part: villages, cities, countries, or even the world (Putnam et al 2018).…”

“…As research shows, biased place memory is often a flashpoint for intergroup conflicts (e.g., Conflict in Cities Research Group 2012; Dumper 2014). Overestimating the importance of one's group may be a potential cause of hostile behaviours towards outgroup members (Golec de Zavala et al 2016;Putnam et al 2018) and support for populist movements, which is increasing in the modern world (Marchlewska et al 2018). Therefore, it is crucial to study the psychological mechanisms underlying such a biased representation of the place's past.…”

Reality Monitoring and Autobiographical Memory: Negotiating the Self

“…But there are inward forces (the truly -inner voice‖), which must ultimately counterbalance such expectations. Good things come from groupinfluence, such as collective reality monitoring; but it also has bad effects, such as collective narcissism (see Putnam, et al, 2018). Collective memory opens our minds but it can also narrow the scope of what matters to us, depending on the type of biases and quality of reality monitoring of the memory-culture of a group.…”