"Students are more narcissistic ... than their predecessors"

[DirtDawg]

A hot button topic in the news:

Study: College Students More Narcissistic


Before everyone flames me into orbit as a block of ice, I think this article is pretty full o'shit. Baby Boomers accusing another generation of being narcissistic is more than a little ironic, in a "pot, calling the kettle black" kind of way, if you ask me. The worst part of this notion is that it's the generation these same narcissistic Baby Boomers raised, they're pointing their arthritic fingers at. I am disgusted to be associated with this bunch of losers by my age and my age alone is about the only parallel I will admit to. You can't really blame youth for fucking up the world by running things into the ground when they haven't even been running things, yet.

I do think this will make for a fascinating bit of two-way banter from some of us. One other comment I read from one of my cyber-friends in a news group:

Wait until today's youth gets their tax bill in 20 years for all of the baby boomers that failed to save for retirement because the boomers have wasted more disposable income on superficial crap than any generation in the history of the world. Not to mention the bill for the baby boomer legislators that are responsible for a fiscal crisis that is embarrassing for the world's biggest economy and richest nation. I'll bet today's youth will be very vocal when they have to clean up the mess of the generation that judged success based on a BMW and SUV in the driveway. Whatever supposed "idealism" the 60's youth had went out the window and without question they have proven that ideals mean nothing when it is time to get paid.

Hopefully, my kids can help clean up the budget crisis, the polluted environment, and the culture of consumption that has been created for them.

He and I see eye-to-eye, most of the time. As lame as it seems, I couldn't have said it better, myself. I see these parents going all over creation, dragging their kids from one drop-off activity to the other and, half the time, the only thing these parents even know about the activity is when they need to pick up the kids, again. They're too busy with their own lives to worry about what their kids are doing.
 

[Callaway]

That is an interesting article, DirtDawg.  Thanks for posting it. 

If the higher NPI scores are being caused by narcissistic baby boomers raising their children to be narcissistic, then who raised the college students who took the NPI test back in 1982?  Weren't they raised by baby boomers too?  The article asserts that the higher scores are caused by the "self-esteem movement" of the 1980's. 

I don't know.  Most of the people this age that I personally know seem to be very helpful toward other people and not narcissistic.  My nephew, who attends college for high school credit, has been helping to build Habitat For Humanity houses with my brother for years and now he helps build them where he attends college.  I'm very proud of him and he does not seem narcissistic to me.  I don't believe that he sweats in the hot Texas sun helping to build the houses just so he can claim another extracurricular activity on his college applications to Harvard and MIT.  If he were doing it for that reason, there are much easier things that he could do.

[Nomaken]

If we've got more narcissists, why are there more angsty emo types?  Or maybe they only seem so angsty and emo, because we're such narcissists....

[McGiver]

If we've got more narcissists, why are there more angsty emo types?  Or maybe they only seem so angsty and emo, because we're such narcissists....

you tell me.

[Callaway]

If we've got more narcissists, why are there more angsty emo types?  Or maybe they only seem so angsty and emo, because we're such narcissists....

Don't you consider yourself Narcissistic, Nomaken?

Why do so many people regard narcissists as so nasty.  I'm a narcissist aint I?  I'm nice pretty often, aren't i?

I dunno, I don't think I have AS.  I think I am just ultra rebellious.  So rebellious that I am weird by design.  I am a lot more similiar to a sociopath or a narcissist. 

I think I would get nuked because I have sociopathic and narcissistic personality qualities.

i'm narcissistic everyday, but most days it is not very obvious to me or anyone else.

[Pyraxis]

Whatever supposed "idealism" the 60's youth had went out the window and without question they have proven that ideals mean nothing when it is time to get paid.

'Course the answer to that is to hold ideals that don't contradict with being paid...

As lame as it seems, I couldn't have said it better, myself. I see these parents going all over creation, dragging their kids from one drop-off activity to the other and, half the time, the only thing these parents even know about the activity is when they need to pick up the kids, again. They're too busy with their own lives to worry about what their kids are doing.

Though just as a note, people who claim that an increase in narcissism is to be blamed on the self-esteem movement are misrepresenting the original self-esteem literature (the bits I've read, anyway). Narcissism would be called "pseudo self esteem" because it's really born of insecurity.

[Nomaken]

Don't you consider yourself Narcissistic, Nomaken?

Yes.  But in this case I was being playful, I actually think the term narcissist is thrown around too carelessly.  'Cause I could get a diagnosis for narcissism easy according to the DSM IV, and I am not that much of an asshole.  They usually reserve the diagnosis of narcissist for people who make me look like mother teresa.