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Cardboard Narcissus There’s a strong case to be made that since the end of World War II, Americans have grown increasingly narcissistic on average – more entitled , with an inflated sense of self-importance.
Psychologists Jean Twenge and W. Keith Campbell are most responsible for collecting data and creating a narrative to support this claim. According to the duo, the rise began with the Baby Boomers , who grew up in an era of relative ease and plenty after their grandparents endured a Great Depression and their parents soldiered and sacrificed through World War II. By the time they were college-aged, Boomers eschewed the collectivist mindset of their elders in favor of individualism.
The trend continued with Boomers’ kids. As Dennis Shen wrote for the London School of Economics’ Phelan United States Centre, “One study comparing teenagers found that while only 12% of those aged 14-16 in the early 1950s agreed with the statement “I am an important person”, 77% of boys and more than 80% of girls of the same cohort by 1989 agreed with it.”
And, of course, the rise in narcissism has persisted since. In 2008, Twenge published a study comparing college students’ scores on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory scale to scores from students in 1979, finding that levels of narcissism had risen roughly 30 percent.
Additional research has evinced this increase. “59% of American college freshmen rated themselves above average in intellectual self-confidence in 2014, compared with 39% in 1966,” Shen wrote .
Owing to the elevated prevalence of social media services over the past decade, it’s highly likely that the rise in narcissism has only accelerated of late. We see it on Twitter, where users flock to share their ‘brilliant’ opinions. We see it on Instagram and TikTok, where people carefully curate their online personas. We also see it […]
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They’re Trying to Shut Us Down
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JD Rucker