“No offense, Homer, but your half-assed under-parenting was a lot more fun than your half-assed over-parenting.”
Science has now proved that all that bitching adults have been doing about kids these days being spoiled is totally justified, so pat yourself on the back if you have not done so already. A new study from The OSU just confirmed this. Sure, the article’s behind a paywall, but you can read the abstract, and I mean that’s the best part. Why waste your time with trivia like methodology? Hm. That’s odd. They’re all in the Netherlands. Only one of them is with OSU, but he’s also with VU University in Amsterdam. Weird. So this is a Dutch study with nominal US affiliation that’s being sold as an American product. Suck it Eurozone!
“The team examined the roots of narcissism, by pitting two competing theories of narcissism against each other.”
Well yeah, I mean it has to be one of those two. It’s like how we proved all softdrinks are unhealthy after analyzing the sugar content of two leading colas.
“The social learning theory suggests… in contrast, a psychoanalytic theory suggests…”
I consider myself reasonably well-read, but I am not terribly familiar with either of these theories, and I’m guessing I’m not the only one. And of course there’s no reason to assume that we’d all be well versed in any given topic. But at the very least if I wanted to corroborate a claim, a cursory lookup would confirm things. Didn’t work in this case. So I’m taking their word for it here. And not even the researchers’ words, but the Forbes author’s words. In the harder sciences, where falsifiability is easier to determine empirically, this is less of a big deal. I accept that a theory in chemistry can be overturned because a set of experimental numbers don’t match the predicted values, but in psychology I’m a lot more skeptical about that kind of precision. It quantifies personality traits, which I think are a little harder to nail down objectively than properties like mass. I’m flying a little blind here. Also, I like how they use a quote by Freud to describe the theory not ascribed to him. The godfather of psychoanalysis literally has a book called “On Narcissism”, but it doesn’t get a mention. I’ll grant that it’s hard to read though—I tried. Albert Bandura is the man behind the other theory, if you wanted to Google him.
“To test which of these theories is more on-point, the team had kids in the Netherlands, ages 7-11, and their parents fill out questionnaires every six months for a year and a half.”
And so here is the actual procedure. This is the entirety of the empirical evidence for their claims about the “roots” of narcissism: three surveys spaced six months apart taken by parents and children. That’s it. Hypothetical: We’re at a party and your friend thinks I’m cute (inb4 “oh, so my friend is apparently completely wasted”, etc.) Not wanting to deal with a bad relationship, she wants to know if I’m a narcissist or not. Think about this: who are the two or three absolute least trustworthy people to ask about my narcissism? Because I’m going to have to go with “myself” and “my parents”. My parents are going to say I’m the greatest because they’re my fucking parents, and parents are genetically programmed to think their kids are great (or epigenetically, I guess). For Chrissake even Stalin’s mom was proud of her son. If this hypothetical gal asked me, no answer I could give would be beyond suspicion. If I say “I’m the greatest”, this could mean I’m trying to play up achievements to look good—chicks love confidence, I hear. If I try and talk about how meek I am, I’m trying to advertise that I’m humble—nobody likes a braggart. What I /want/ her to think, for all she knows, is indistinguishable from whatever the truth may be. So how can the questionnaires identify if the parents and children are telling you the truth or trying to tell the researchers how they want to be perceived?
If your friend wanted to know whether or not I was a narcissist, and she’s sensible enough not to trust my answers on a questionnaire or my parents’ answers, then how would she go about figuring it out? How about, I don’t know, ask literally anyone else who’s interacted with me? “But isn’t everyone else biased too?” Yes. This is why you did vector addition in highschool. If my ex is at the party, her assessment of my narcissism score will probably be overly inflated. My best friend or Bill Belichick will underinflate it. The guy I was chatting with over by the beer cooler wasn’t with me long enough to get a sense one way or the other. The dude I had a couple classes with in highschool can only speak about the me from 10 years ago. What, she wants an objective measure of my narcissism? Well, if she’s a praying woman…. Fuck, even if God doesn’t answer prayers, she could probably get a decent idea of my personality by observing /me/. If I act like a raging narcissist, then perhaps, just perhaps, I am one. Say what you will about Freud’s theories, but he at least developed them in part off of his experiences with observing actual patients. Since God is dead, the researchers aren’t going to luck out with objectivity, but they could have sent the surveys to other people. Teachers come to mind.
But honestly, I’m playing into the game by arguing about how narcissism is determined. They results could be 100% objective and this is still a completely useless study. But fuck me, I already wrote all that, so…
“‘Narcissistic children feel superior to others, believe they are entitled to privileges, and crave for constant admiration from others,’ study author Eddie Brummelman tells me.”
The following is a true statement: “Children feel superior to others, believe they are entitled to privileges, and crave for constant admiration from others.” Spend five goddamn minutes with any child, or anyone who has frequent interaction with a child if you don’t believe me.
“To test… these theories … kids… ages 7-11… questionnaires every six months for a year and a half.”
I.e. they have information on the narcissism of 8 and a half to 13 year olds. So. Fucking. What? “Well, we want to know what makes narcissism /worse/!” In… in kids? Kids are already narcissists; that’s how God made them. In no viable universe will adults not have to deal with that.
“Narcissistic individuals are also at increased risk to develop addiction. Subgroups of narcissists, especially those with low self-esteem, are at increased risk to develop anxiety and depression.”
Well, some numbers for that would be nice, but okay. So what, some kids who have “parental overvaluation” become narcissists, and some narcissists I guess smoke and get depressed, so fuck any potential confounding variables or continuity issues, the transitive property says that participation trophies caused that new street drug you heard about on the local news. I mean that’s a goddamn mathematical proof! But what if you didn’t praise little Billy’s painting in art class that looks like a Jackson Pollack and he still ends up smoking pot and getting panic attacks?
“Of course, narcissism is partly based on genetics”. Hey, nothing you could have done about it. The important thing is that you didn’t do something. “Have you ever wondered why fat parents have fat children? Or why Chinese parents have Chinese children? It’s no coincidence; it’s because of DNA.” Also, if it is genetic, then to what extent can parents influence it? If I inherit a high probability of retinal detachment from my dad, nothing he can do as a parent will change my outcome. So, okay, it can be partially genetic, but parental control can still have an effect over it. So… is the genetic stuff the same as the environmental stuff? Will the same parenting strategies work on each? Getting anxiety from genetics and anxiety from a shitty environment both might call for Xanax, but are the other coping strategies going to be the same?
Narcissism in children and adolescents is a fact of life. The problem is narcissism in adulthood. But the study didn’t track narcissistic traits through adulthood, so from this we can include absolutely fuck all. “You have any idea how long that study would take!?” 30 years might be long enough. “The people running the study wouldn’t even get to publish until they’ve retired! Their entire generation would miss out on the data!” Anything shorter and the data are useless. People over 40 now might not get anything out of it, but if it were set up right, their kids sure as shit might. That would involve thinking that the next generations are more important than their current one, i.e., not thinking their generation is the most important. But there’s something preventing that. Some… psychological concept…
“Which kids were more likely to be narcissistic as time went by? Parental overvaluation was the largest predictor of a child’s narcissism over time…”
Here’s the trick with that “was the largest” phrasing: while I’ll assume they read the numbers in the study correctly and will concede that this may be technically true, it’s absolutely going to be read and repeated as “is the largest” and that is entirely yet to be proven. It being the largest predictor /of the factors they provided/ does not mean there are not other factors that may be influential. But that’s not how it’s coming off. So now people don’t have to consider other options outside of the study. “Based on an analysis of the mountains of Ohio, we have concluded that most mountain climbing gear and advice is unnecessary.” True in context, but not universally. Also, I’m super curious to know what constitutes “overvaluation”. If the researchers have an objective benchmark for the right amount of “valuation”, I feel like that itself might be worth sharing. And again, I’ll reiterate my complaint that this measures words, not actions. Parents who say they overvalue their kids, or however that works, may not actually overvalue their kids—or vice versa. “‘I let my child know I love him/her’.” Whatever that means.
“…but interestingly, it did not predict self-esteem.”
Interestingly? I find a /lot/ of trivial things interesting, but this? I mean I wasn’t expecting it to predict self-esteem. In fact, I wasn’t expecting anything about self –esteem. What does that have to do with anything? (To be honest, I’m still not actually sure what self-esteem even is).
“In other words, telling kids how exceptional they are doesn’t produce kids with good healthy self-esteem – it just makes them more narcissistic.”
Curious phrasing: “telling kids how exceptional they are”. Wait, so you’re saying they /are/ exceptional? I’m confused. If they’re actually exceptional, then it’s not narcissism, it’s a reasonable opinion.
“‘People with high self-esteem think they’re as good as others, whereas narcissists think they’re better than others,’”
I’ll concede that “self-esteem” has a pretty nebulous definition, but in what world does it mean thinking you’re “as good” as others? The association here with self-esteem is, again, kind of perplexing. There’s almost certainly something to this, but I’m not sure I have the wherewithal to suss it out. The trouble is that the term sounds loaded, and I don’t know which way it’s intended, at this point.
“‘Children believe it when their parents tell them that they are more special than others.’”
So, I find it a little hard to believe that parents, at least in any sizable number, are explicitly telling their kids that they are “more special than others”. “Well, when you tell your kids they’re special, that necessarily implies they are more special than others. That’s kind of how the definition works.” But are the kids internalizing that logic? Also, when the fuck do parents ever just straight up call their kids special? “Come on, you watch The Simpsons. Marge calls Bart her ‘special little guy’ all the time.” Right. NB the “my”.
“If your child is genetically predisposed to narcissism,”
What, is there like a blood test they can do? Come to think of it, how did they prove narcissism is genetic? *Types “narcissism genetic” into PubMed. 36 results. Only one of them looks relevant: a twin study on Chinese kids. So, are we positive that this is applicable to Americans? It’s less that I’m concerned about the proof that it’s inheritable than I am that they are tracking the same personality trait. Does narcissism mean the same thing in American culture as it does to the Chinese?
“‘…it’s all the more important not to falsely inflate his or her sense of worth, but instead to be more down-to-earth about congratulations, and more reserved about praise.’”
This is John Madden levels of fucking worthless commentary. Don’t falsely inflate a kid’s sense of worth. Thanks, tautologyman! You’ve saved the village! Want to be a little more specific? Seriously, that vagueness is disturbing. There is absolutely no useful information in that advice, yet this is going to be repeated as sensible. How much “praise” is excessive? What constitutes “falsely inflating” a sense of south worth? Because if these are, as the author argues, the things that cause narcissism, then shouldn’t the advice for remedying the situation be dispensed a little less flippantly?
“Bushman… says that his research in narcissism ‘has changed my parenting style…. When I first started doing this research in the 1990s, I used to think my children should be treated like they were extra-special. I’m careful not to do that now.’”
Well that’s just fucking depressing.
The trouble with this article is that it’s condemning a generation of kids, and doing nothing to improve parenting. I’ll grant that I’m not a parent, and my experience with children is not substantial, but I’ve babysat my friend’s currently 5 year old daughter and good number of times, and I’ve tutored kids running the gamut of ages, and I certainly find the idea of raising children the best I possibly can to be a daunting and intimidating challenge, but the modicum of parental instinct I have is screaming at me that this is completely fucking insane. My kids ARE fucking special. To me. And that’s what fucking matters. And I will be God damned if I ever treat them as anything but. And it terrifies me that there is advocacy for not treating your kids as special. “Well they can’t all be special, otherwise the word becomes meaningless.” Didn’t fucking stop anyone from using “literally” to mean “figuratively”…. Praising 7 year olds is not going to destroy society. If your kid has a piano recital and he sucks, clap anyway. “How was I?” “Well son, you know, Chopin composed two whole polonaises when he was your age. You’re nothing special.” That’s the wrong fucking answer. “Wonderful” is the correct response, in case there was any doubt, which apparently there is, hence this article. This study hardly provides conclusive evidence that “overvaluing” your kid will screw them up; it shows at best an association of an unprovided degree. Maybe parents who overvalue their kids on a survey parent differently than the others in a way that e/affects narcissism? But fuck confounding variables; those are hard to find. My own conjecture is that being neurotic about “overvaluing” your kid to the point where you contemplate adjusting parenting styles because of the summary of a study you read about in Forbes sure as shit might be damaging. As if kids who don’t know where they stand will be well-adjusted. The annoying thing is that this entire article is resting its argument on a bullshit tautology: “Sure, we should still praise kids, just not too much.” So any criticism I levy can be countered with, “well, that’s probably not too much praise”, which, again, makes this a useless argument at best. At the worst though, it justifies not adequately ensuring that children know they are valued. Even if the choice between ensuring kids feel valued and turning them into narcissists isn’t a false dichotomy, the former’s always going to be the better choice. I’m optimistic: I think this is a false dichotomy; I think there’s more to narcissism in adults than just their parents saying that they’re great when hey were growing up. And that’s not to say that parents aren’t likely to be a major factor in developing narcissism in their children.
And the cynical part of me wonders if this isn’t even for the kids, but for the parents. “Kids these days are so spoiled and incompetent. It’s the fault of those parents who overvalue their kids, you know. But hey, at least I’m not one of them.” Hm, you know, I think psychology a name for that….