Abigail Hotchkiss
Issue number 13
No side
Introduction:
An Emerging Epidemic of Narcissism or much excitement about nothing? The definition of Narcissism is extreme selfishness, with a splendid view of one's own talents and a craving for approval, as characterizing a personality type. Twenge and his colleagues have raised their concern about narcissism among college students today. Twenge has argue the increase of the self- esteem movement is unintended. “The self-esteem movement has created an army of little narcissists.” This is what twenge has said to be accurate. In the article “Mapping the Scale of the Narcissism Epidemic” It says that the levels of narcissism have increased over the last two decades.
Previous Research on worldly changes in Narcissism:
In a previous research the article said the data had failed supporting Tweneges theory that “narcissism is much more common in recent generations”. They found the same average score on the 40-piece Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI). The data collected on large scales of college students; from the University of California, Berkeley, and UC Davis. Re-testing and replicating the original findings of the college students in California, did not show an increase of narcissism. They believe it to be occurring as a whole in the society. At California University there was an increase of Asian-American students, who scored lower on the scale of narcissism than white students. The real question here is; are racial/ ethnic groups a significant topic in this debate? Or are they ignored. They are both significant as well as ignored. Studies concluded that the levels of narcissism of Whites and Asian- Americans have increased simultaneously. The results did conclude there is an epidemic of narcissism among college students today.
Results
There are two ways to analyze repeating movements in narcissism. One way is that scores are calculated each year and linked with back to back yearly data. This is called ecological correction. Another way is when the individual participant’s scores are collected and linked from year to year. This type of analysis produces a association figure that is used for personality research. Both assessments reflect the common factor of narcissism levels and in turn tells us the trends. The method that Twenge and Foster used to obtain the most accurate information was the ecological method. This method worked especially well for collecting data on their assumption that ethnicity misperceives the general trend. The problem with this method is that the ecological method has a very large scale and variety. When the second approach was used, the results were considerably smaller. In contrast to Twenge and Foster having the same data, the numbers little to none had changed, and even when the ethnic groups were included.
Discussion
Based on the overall configuration of results in this report the evidence is not convincing, there is a widespread or considerable secular increase in narcissism. Finally, it has been emphasized that there is nothing in any of this data that suggest an epidemic of narcissism. NPI is measured at random, there is no evidence, no basis for declaring when an average score is indicated at high or low. Evidence for any increased population of narcissism is far from straightforward, this is why researchers are wary of labeling any apparent changes as evidence of an epidemic.