The Narcissism Epidemic Is Dead; Long Live the Narcissism Epidemic

Abstract

Are recent cohorts of college students more narcissistic than their predecessors? To address debates about the so-called "narcissism epidemic," we used data from three cohorts of students (1990s: N = 1,166; 2000s: N = 33,647; 2010s: N = 25,412) to test whether narcissism levels (overall and specific facets) have increased across generations. We also tested whether our measure, the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI), showed measurement equivalence across the three cohorts, a critical analysis that had been overlooked in prior research. We found that several NPI items were not equivalent across cohorts. Models accounting for nonequivalence of these items indicated a small decline in overall narcissism levels from the 1990s to the 2010s ( d = -0.27). At the facet level, leadership ( d = -0.20), vanity ( d = -0.16), and entitlement ( d = -0.28) all showed decreases. Our results contradict the claim that recent cohorts of college students are more narcissistic than earlier generations of college students.

Eyebrows cue grandiose narcissism

“…The ability to identify dark personality traits at zero acquaintance provides particular value for avoiding exploitation and manipulation (e.g., narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy; Fowler, Lilienfeld, & Patrick, 2009;Vazire et al, 2008). The increasing incidence of narcissism underscores this value (e.g., Twenge, Konrath, Foster, Campbell, & Bushman, 2008; though see Wetzel et al, 2017). Fortunately, people can accurately judge others' narcissism based on how they act, what they say, what they wear, and what their faces look like (e.g., Vazire et al, 2008).…”

Do consumer choices augment narcissism? The role of self-referent processing

“…Starting in the 1970s (Twenge, Campbell, & Gentile, 2012), narcissism has risen over the last decades in the US (and not only;Cai, Kwan, & Sedikides, 2012), culminating in what has been termed a "narcissism epidemic" (Twenge & Campbell, 2009;Twenge & Foster, 2010; for an opposing view and a response, see Wetzel et al, 2017;and Campbell, Twenge, Konrath, Cooper, & Foster, 2018;respectively). This trend has been linked to a broader culture of self-love and self-admiration characterizing contemporary societies (Campbell, Miller, & Buffardi, 2010;Sedikides, Gaertner, & Cai, 2015), which is reflected in the positive associations between narcissism and use of social networking websites (McCain & Campbell, 2016) or posting of selfies (Fox & Rooney, 2015;Sorokowski et al, 2015).…”

Self–Esteem among Chinese Cohorts: Its Temporal Trend and Its Relationships with Socioecological Factors, 1993–2016

“…Next, we did not have information to ensure the measurement equivalence across cohorts, which is an important prerequisite for examining changes across time points using cross‐temporal data. In fact, some evidence showed measurement noninvariance across cohorts, suggesting changes in the interpretation of some concepts over time (Wetzel et al, ). Moreover, although it was beyond the scope of the present study, the quadratic trend analysis adopted in the present study may not accurately detect the turning point of the temporal trend of self‐esteem (Fjell et al, ).…”