219. How Do You Identify a Narcissist? AI transcript and summary - episode of podcast No Stupid Questions

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Episode: 219. How Do You Identify a Narcissist?

Author: Freakonomics Radio + Stitcher
Duration: 00:40:48

Episode Shownotes

What’s the difference between narcissism and high self-esteem? Does social media fuel arrogance or self-consciousness? And do people get less toxic with age? SOURCES:Brené Brown, research professor at the University of Houston and visiting professor in management at the University of Texas at Austin.Jonathan Haidt, professor of social psychology at

the New York University Stern School of Business.Michael Lewis, author.Cooper McAllister, senior consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton.Jean Twenge, professor of psychology at San Diego State University. RESOURCES:"‘Narcissistic Abuse’ Has Gone Mainstream. But What Is It?" Abby Ellin (The Washington Post, 2024)."Development of Narcissism Across the Life Span: A Meta-Analytic Review of Longitudinal Studies," by Ulrich Orth, Samantha Krauss, and Mitja D. Back (Psychological Bulletin, 2024).The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, by Jonathan Haidt (2024)."America Is Obsessed With Narcissists. Is Trump to Blame?" by Charles Trepany (USA Today, 2024)."Narcissism Today: What We Know and What We Need to Learn," by Joshua D. Miller, Mitja D. Back, Donald R. Lynam, and Aidan G. C. Wright (Current Directions in Psychological Science, 2021)."Egos Deflating With the Great Recession: A Cross-Temporal Meta-Analysis and Within-Campus Analysis of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, 1982–2016," by Jean M. Twenge, Sara H. Konrath, Cooper McAllister, et al. (Personality and Individual Differences, 2021)."Narcissistic Personality Disorder: Diagnostic and Clinical Challenges," by Eve Caligor, Kenneth N. Levy, and Frank E. Yeomans (American Journal of Psychiatry, 2015).Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled — and More Miserable Than Ever Before, by Jean Twenge (2006).Cincinnatus and the Citizen-Servant Ideal: The Roman Legend's Life, Times, and Legacy, by Michael J. Hillyard (2001). EXTRAS:"Is Screen Time as Poisonous as We Think?" by Freakonomics Radio (2024)."Do 'Generations' Mean Anything?" by No Stupid Questions (2023)."Is Pride the Worst Sin?" by No Stupid Questions (2023).The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, by Michael Lewis (2010).

Summary

In this episode, hosts Angela Duckworth and Mike Maughan discuss the complexities of narcissism, questioning whether it exists on a spectrum rather than as a binary condition. They differentiate between grandiose and vulnerable narcissism, explaining their traits and societal implications. The discussion references historical insights, including the myth of Cincinnatus, and examines contemporary findings by Jean Twenge, who notes fluctuating trends in narcissism across generations. The role of social media and economic conditions in shaping narcissistic behaviors is also considered, alongside perspectives on how understanding these dynamics can inform our interactions with others.

Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (219. How Do You Identify a Narcissist?) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.

Full Transcript

00:00:03 Speaker_01
Hi, NSQ listeners. Before we start the show, we should note that today's conversation briefly touches on presidential politics, but it was recorded before the November 5th election. We hope you enjoy the episode.

00:00:18 Speaker_06
Sounds riveting.

00:00:20 Speaker_03
I'm Angela Duckworth.

00:00:21 Speaker_06
I'm Mike Mahn. And you're listening to No Stupid Questions.

00:00:26 Speaker_01
Today on the show, what does it mean to be a narcissist, really?

00:00:30 Speaker_07
I'm so tired of just thinking about myself all the time.

00:00:49 Speaker_03
Mike, we have an email from Aditi, and I'm going to read it to you. You ready?

00:00:54 Speaker_07
Yes, I am.

00:00:56 Speaker_03
All right. Dear Angela and Mike, is narcissism a range? I was wondering what percentage of people are truly so narcissistic that it has a negative impact on people? How do we identify them?

00:01:09 Speaker_03
What would be an effective solution to minimize their possible negative impact on society? Regards, Aditi.

00:01:17 Speaker_07
Well, I love Aditi's question.

00:01:19 Speaker_07
I mean, narcissism gets its name, of course, from Narcissus, who's a character in Greek mythology who goes to, I think it's a lake or a pond, and sees his own reflection and falls so in love with himself that he will neither eat nor drink nor move until he can be with this reflection we love so much and ultimately dies, right?

00:01:42 Speaker_03
Yeah, he's so captivated. He is rooted to the spot. You remember how the myth ends, right?

00:01:47 Speaker_07
Well, I thought he just dies because he's just so infatuated with himself. But remind me.

00:01:53 Speaker_03
So I don't remember probably all the details of the myth, but what I recall is that he catches this reflection of himself. This is, of course, before mirrors.

00:02:01 Speaker_03
You know, he's rooted there to the spot, and then dies, and the flower, Narcissus, actually springs up in the place where he, because, you know, Narcissus is a flower, right? And it is very beautiful. But the idea of narcissism and our own reflection

00:02:19 Speaker_03
I mean, Jason was telling me that in the old days, you know, before mirrors became commonplace, there was a time where the common practice was if you did have a mirror, you would cover it with cloth. for most of the day. Really? Yeah.

00:02:36 Speaker_03
And I think there was this kind of idea that like it could be a dangerous thing to be looking at yourself all the time. I have to say the only person I've heard this cloth over the mirror in old houses from is Jason Duckworth.

00:02:48 Speaker_03
So I'd have to fact check that. But yeah, narcissism has a very long history.

00:02:54 Speaker_07
What's interesting right now, though, is that there tends to be it looks like a rise in at least familiarity with narcissism or the idea of who's a narcissist and what it is.

00:03:06 Speaker_07
Look, during the presidential election in 2016, when Donald Trump was running against Hillary Clinton, it did spark a discussion about narcissism and Google Trends data. So Google Trends will just show you what people are searching.

00:03:24 Speaker_07
On Google, web searches for narcissism skyrocketed between September of 2016 and January of 2017, which is that period when Trump was elected and took office.

00:03:36 Speaker_07
Interestingly, the hashtag narcissistic abuse has more than 1.4 million posts on Instagram right now. June 1st is now World Narcissistic Abuse Awareness Day.

00:03:46 Speaker_03
Wait, narcissistic abuse. What is that?

00:03:49 Speaker_07
Narcissistic abuse, to be clear, is not a clinical term here.

00:03:53 Speaker_07
It's more of a colloquial thing that people talk about, but it's how people are able to express on social media or in other ways the impacts that they have felt in their lives from individuals displaying narcissistic behavior.

00:04:06 Speaker_07
I mean, I think I may have shared with you before, I spent years working with someone who was a horrible narcissist, but I didn't have the language for it.

00:04:16 Speaker_03
Well, you had a coworker who you thought was, I mean, we could talk about whether they would qualify for a diagnosis, but he was a narcissist.

00:04:22 Speaker_07
And I'll admit that for years, I couldn't place it. I knew it was a massively negative relationship. I knew it was having negative impacts on not just me, but people all around.

00:04:35 Speaker_07
But it wasn't until a different person came in and said, well, you know that so-and-so is a clinical narcissist.

00:04:43 Speaker_07
Now, whether they are clinical or not, it suddenly turned a light on in my mind, and I was able to view all of this past bad behavior in a way that helped me understand.

00:04:54 Speaker_07
I mean, Brene Brown has given the, again, colloquial definition that for me helped understand it. She said, narcissism is the shame-based fear of being ordinary. I mean, she nailed it for that one person.

00:05:08 Speaker_07
I'm sure there are better and more accurate definitions. But this idea, a shame-based fear of being ordinary. So you had to exercise grandiosity and charm and all these things in a way that... Because deep down, you were just afraid.

00:05:22 Speaker_07
Put other people down. Yeah, I think so. But tell me, what does the psychological literature say on it?

00:05:27 Speaker_03
So this question is asking, first of all, like, what is it and is it a range or is it just like you are or you're not?

00:05:34 Speaker_07
I'm going to go firmly on the range side, right?

00:05:36 Speaker_03
You know, there aren't many things in psychology that are not ranges, like, for example, ADHD, which people sometimes say, like, I have it or I don't. But that's also a continuum.

00:05:48 Speaker_03
And even things like schizophrenia, actually, it turns out you can be a little or moderate or like extremely schizophrenic. So almost everything that I can even think of in psychology is a range.

00:06:03 Speaker_03
So if you're ever on a final exam and the choices are, is it a range or is it like a categorical thing that you are or you aren't, on balance, guessing that it's a range is a pretty good educated guess.

00:06:15 Speaker_03
And that is true for narcissistic personality disorder, but For any psychopathology, there are these kind of clinical cutoffs where, like, you have to reach a certain degree of severity.

00:06:26 Speaker_03
And for clinical disorders in general, I believe also that it has to be dysfunctional in some way.

00:06:32 Speaker_07
And what does that mean?

00:06:34 Speaker_03
I think there's some judgment there. Very often, for example, when it comes to depression or anxiety, there are these checklists of symptoms, trouble sleeping, trouble eating, thoughts that you can't control.

00:06:46 Speaker_03
There's actually this book, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. It's abbreviated to like the DSM and it's used by psychologists and psychiatrists. It's also used by insurance companies for reimbursement.

00:06:57 Speaker_03
You know, you have to have criteria to say like, oh, yes, this person is clinically depressed and therefore like they qualify for a certain kind of treatment that should be reimbursed.

00:07:06 Speaker_03
So in the DSM, at the end of these checklists, there is, I think always, and certainly almost always, a criterion that is basically causing dysfunctionality in life and work and so forth.

00:07:20 Speaker_03
Like, yeah, you have these symptoms, but also now this is impairing your life, like your personal relationships, your physical health, your work. But I think with narcissistic personality disorder, one wrinkle,

00:07:32 Speaker_03
might be that it's causing dysfunction for other people.

00:07:37 Speaker_07
Right. I think anyone who's on the extreme or even close to the edge on narcissism is causing massive issues for other people.

00:07:47 Speaker_03
When you look at the formal diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder, like what it really is, because there's a lot of debate about whether it is what people stereotypically think of as narcissism, like in social media or whatever.

00:08:00 Speaker_03
But the prevalence estimates, meaning like, you know, how many people in the general population would have ever qualified for this diagnosis, it is low single digits.

00:08:12 Speaker_03
Estimates range from 0%, I mean obviously close to 0, to 5% in the general population. You know, for example, rates of depression and anxiety and many other things are way higher than narcissistic personality disorder.

00:08:27 Speaker_07
And that's what I think is actually somewhat interesting in the common parlance using the word narcissist right now. Some are saying we're using the word too loosely and it's losing its power because it just means everything nowadays.

00:08:41 Speaker_03
Well, look, what we immediately think of when we think of a narcissist, which is this kind of like grandiosity, excessive self-esteem, just like thinking you are the cat's pajamas. I don't know where that expression came from. It's adorable.

00:08:54 Speaker_03
It makes no sense. But anyway, you know, having this like exceedingly high sense of self-esteem, one could argue, like that's the stereotype. And then low regard and low empathy for other people. That is what everyone thinks of as narcissism.

00:09:09 Speaker_03
But what clinical psychologists would say is there are two forms. So I'm going to read to you from an article that was published in 2015. It's called Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Diagnostic and Clinical Challenges.

00:09:22 Speaker_06
Sounds riveting.

00:09:24 Speaker_03
You know what, I saw that title and I was like, but then I started reading it and it's actually fascinating because narcissism is fascinating.

00:09:32 Speaker_03
So what the authors say is that individuals with narcissistic personality disorder may be grandiose or self-loathing. They may be extroverted or socially isolated, captains of industry or unable to maintain steady employment.

00:09:52 Speaker_03
model citizens, or prone to antisocial activities. And so I want to say that the grandiose form of narcissism is what is stereotyped, and the vulnerable form of narcissism is less well-known.

00:10:10 Speaker_03
That actually is characterized by having low and fragile self-esteem

00:10:16 Speaker_06
Interesting.

00:10:17 Speaker_03
So there are these two subtypes, but the way you get these two subtypes, it is now thought, is that there are like three underlying ingredients or elements, and in different combinations, they give rise to these two subtypes.

00:10:32 Speaker_03
So basically, the thing that these two subtypes, grandiose and vulnerable narcissism, have in common is something called antagonism. Let me read to you from an article called Narcissism Today, what we know and what we need to learn.

00:10:47 Speaker_03
And the idea of antagonism, which is common to both forms of narcissism, is in the words of these authors, rivalry, entitlement, individuals high in antagonism tend to be arrogant, callous, deceitful, entitled, exploitative, cynical.

00:11:08 Speaker_03
Your victories are their losses. Right. Your advantages are their disadvantages. It's this like excessive comparison in a very zero sum way with other people.

00:11:18 Speaker_03
But if you ask, you know, what is really grandiose narcissism, the kind of that we usually think of like, well, what else is there other than antagonism? The other ingredient is what psychologists call agentic extroversion.

00:11:30 Speaker_03
OK, so let me again read from this paper on what we now think about narcissism. agentic extroversion.

00:11:38 Speaker_03
It is more adaptive, i.e., causes the narcissistic individual fewer interpersonal problems, and it is associated with assertiveness, leadership, high self-esteem, and a tendency to be proactive rather than reactive, and to be motivated by reward more than punishment.

00:11:57 Speaker_03
Agentic extroversion uniquely characterizes grandiose narcissism. And when I read that, I was like, oh, wait, that doesn't sound so bad. And actually, one of the items used to assess this element of grandiose narcissism is I aspire to greatness.

00:12:14 Speaker_03
And when I read that item, you know, I thought about grit and I thought about, you know, that I study it, it's like, oh, yes, they 100% aspire to greatness.

00:12:24 Speaker_03
So grandiose narcissism, which is one of the subtypes, is the combination of agentic extroversion with an antagonistic view. But I do want to tell you about vulnerable narcissism, because when I dug into this a little bit, it was news to me.

00:12:36 Speaker_03
I had never even heard of vulnerable narcissism. Maybe that's what Brene Brown is talking about, like this shame-based fear. But have you come across this at all?

00:12:43 Speaker_07
Just to clarify on the Brene, it was the shame-based fear of being ordinary. Like, I can't be ordinary, so I have to continually show how grandiose I am, that I'm better than everyone, right?

00:12:54 Speaker_07
But no, I've never seen anything on the vulnerable side of it. So teach me.

00:12:58 Speaker_03
So the vulnerable narcissist not only has this antagonistic view, but they also have what's called narcissistic neuroticism.

00:13:08 Speaker_03
And again, let me read to you from this 2015 article, because I think the clinicians who have thought long and hard about what narcissism really is put it best.

00:13:19 Speaker_03
The vulnerable, quote, fragile, unquote, or thin-skinned covert subtype is inhibited, manifestly distressed, hypersensitive to the evaluation of others while chronically envious and evaluating themselves in relation to others.

00:13:36 Speaker_03
Interpersonally, these individuals are often shy, outwardly self-effacing, and hypersensitive to slights while harboring perhaps secret grandiosity.

00:13:47 Speaker_03
So, both types of narcissism are self-absorbed, both are very comparative, but you can see this almost like mirror image in vulnerability.

00:13:57 Speaker_03
Research suggests that the vulnerable subtype of narcissism is associated with low self-esteem, whereas the grandiose form is associated with high self-esteem. So, I too see the through line here as being this like antagonism.

00:14:12 Speaker_03
And also, think about that myth of narcissists. there's something wrong with how you are thinking about yourself too much, like this deep self-absorption.

00:14:21 Speaker_03
Because healthy self-esteem, I think psychologists would agree, is a fundamental positive thing, right? Like, self-esteem is good to have.

00:14:30 Speaker_07
Right. What's interesting is some of these traits that we're saying are in a narcissist have their positive place, right?

00:14:38 Speaker_07
If you think about it in terms of a strong leader who's going to take big, bold risks, make decisions, you have to have some element of belief that you are the right person to take the job. You are the one who should run for president.

00:14:54 Speaker_03
I'd say it's true of agentic extroversion, right? Sorry for all the terminology. I did not make up these terms. But that agentic extroversion ingredient, I think you're right about that. Like, awesome, you want to be great.

00:15:07 Speaker_03
But you don't need to have antagonism to be a leader. There doesn't have to be a loser for you to be a winner. Like, if this grandiose narcissism reveals anything, it's that that element of I want to be

00:15:20 Speaker_03
awesome can be very dangerous when you think of life as a zero sum game.

00:15:25 Speaker_07
Yes. All I'm saying is let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Some of these traits, when decoupled from the negative ones, are actually pretty powerful.

00:15:35 Speaker_03
Yeah. Just that one, by the way, I don't think there's a whole lot to say in defense of antagonism or narcissistic neuroticism. But Mike, I know you and I would love to hear our listeners' thoughts on narcissism.

00:15:49 Speaker_03
Do you think that you have a narcissist in your life? If so, how do you deal with them? Record a voice memo in a quiet place with your mouth close to the phone and email us at nsq at Freakonomics.com. Maybe we'll play it on a future episode of the show.

00:16:06 Speaker_03
Also, if you are as obsessed with this podcast As narcissists are obsessed with themselves, the very best thing you can do is to tell a friend about it. You can also spread the word on social media or leave a review in your favorite podcast app.

00:16:23 Speaker_01
Still to come on No Stupid Questions, does narcissism fade or intensify with time?

00:16:30 Speaker_07
Wait, peak narcissism is when you're eight years old?

00:16:45 Speaker_01
Now, back to Mike and Angela's conversation about narcissism.

00:16:57 Speaker_07
So Cincinnati is named after Cincinnatus. He's a Roman figure. Like an actual person? In antiquity, I don't remember the years.

00:17:04 Speaker_03
Not, like narcissists didn't exist.

00:17:06 Speaker_07
He's an actual person who's been mythologized.

00:17:08 Speaker_03
Okay, he was human.

00:17:09 Speaker_07
So he was celebrated for being this humble leader who just focused on civic duty. And according to legend, he was out plowing his fields when he gets this call to come serve as the ruler during this epic crisis in Rome.

00:17:28 Speaker_07
So, he successfully comes in, he defends Rome, and then he promptly resigns and goes right back to the farm to plow his fields.

00:17:36 Speaker_07
And so, Cincinnatus is often talked about in politics where the way people often use it now is like, well, I didn't want to run for president, but I felt a calling from my country or I'm doing this for the future of my grandchildren, right?

00:17:51 Speaker_07
It's like, I don't want this, but I'm doing it on behalf of others. What I think is interesting today is that instead it's like, I want to be president because I'm dang good at what I do and I'm the best person for the job.

00:18:03 Speaker_07
Whereas historically it's been, I'm doing this to serve.

00:18:08 Speaker_03
Well, let's talk about change in narcissism. So yeah, there is this clinical diagnosis to meet full criteria is quite rare, but there's a range and all of us are somewhere on that range, just like for any other personality trait.

00:18:24 Speaker_03
And one way of thinking about change is to think about how there are ebbs and flows in narcissism in the population, depending on culture. You're alluding to that, right?

00:18:35 Speaker_03
Like, well, maybe there is more at least brazen embracing of like one's own ego and being OK with that being the primary motive for you to seek office or have power.

00:18:49 Speaker_03
So when I think of generational change, the person who really leaps to mind always is Gene Twenge. So Jean Twenge as a psychologist, she's very well known for doing these generational studies.

00:19:02 Speaker_03
So whenever there's a questionnaire, like for narcissism, the leading questionnaire is the narcissistic personality inventory. And it's been around for a while, and Jean Twenge analyzed data that begins in 1982.

00:19:19 Speaker_03
So she has college students who have taken the questionnaire in the early 80s through the mid 80s, college students in the 90s and then college students in the early aughts and then on and on.

00:19:33 Speaker_03
It's kind of like a, you know, instant cultural study across generations. One of her most famous findings was the conclusion that we are becoming more narcissistic as a society, particularly in the United States.

00:19:47 Speaker_07
Which isn't shocking.

00:19:49 Speaker_03
Do you think that we are?

00:19:50 Speaker_07
Well, yes, I think so. I think part of it, though, is maybe going along with this idea of the death, if you will, of the myth of Cincinnatus. Maybe we're not becoming more narcissistic. We just don't feel the need to hide it anymore.

00:20:06 Speaker_03
which would affect how people answer questionnaires, by the way.

00:20:09 Speaker_07
For sure. I will say one of the periods of my life that I was maybe least happy was when I was applying to business school, because for a period of months, you're only focused on yourself. You're writing all of these essays about how great I am.

00:20:27 Speaker_07
And I'm just thinking about stories of things that I've done or getting my resume up or getting people to write letters of recommendation about me.

00:20:34 Speaker_07
And I remember saying to a friend, I can't wait for this to be over because I'm so tired of just thinking about myself all the time.

00:20:43 Speaker_03
Well, maybe this study that I'll tell you about from Gene Twenge, and I should say there's a graduate researcher, at least at the time, Cooper McAllister, who was also a co-author. I mean, maybe it will say something about focus on self.

00:20:56 Speaker_03
So what Gene has found is that beginning from the early 80s, all the way up through, I want to say like around 2008, like what I guess is now called the Great Recession.

00:21:09 Speaker_03
You find an upward trend, meaning that the scores on this narcissistic personality index on average trended upward, that each successive generation was more likely to score higher in the trade of narcissism.

00:21:22 Speaker_03
I think Gene may have coined the term generation me.

00:21:26 Speaker_03
But then, and here's the plot twist, really interesting, what she finds using the exact same techniques, looking at data since the Great Recession, is a decline in scores on the narcissistic personality index. Really?

00:21:40 Speaker_03
Yeah, like actually a steeper decline than there was an incline.

00:21:44 Speaker_03
In the summary of this paper, she says that the decline in narcissistic personality inventory scores during and after the recession took narcissism back to their original levels in the 1980s and 90s.

00:22:00 Speaker_07
I mean, I think it takes something like a societal shift, which you could say the Great Recession was, to reset expectations of individuals and maybe even a society to create that massive change, right?

00:22:15 Speaker_03
Yeah. So what is your speculation? Because, you know, by the way, it's all correlational data.

00:22:19 Speaker_03
And there are many scientists who hate this kind of research because, you know, you can just have a really long dinner party conversation about all the reasons why there are these trends, because it's not an experiment. Right.

00:22:30 Speaker_03
So there are so many things going on that could account for it. Nevertheless, I think it's very important data. So what are your intuitions about why narcissism may have risen and then fallen during this later period.

00:22:43 Speaker_07
My mind immediately goes to the mortgage lenders. Michael Lewis writes about this in The Big Short. You have all of these individuals who think that they are the king or the queen of their castle, who are just crushing it.

00:22:58 Speaker_07
And I am the greatest, I, I, I, I, and they think that they can do anything. Titans of the universe. And then when the market and the global economy goes through this massive recession,

00:23:11 Speaker_07
we stop thinking about ourselves individually and how great we are, and instead have to look collectively. It's almost like when things are going well, I want to take credit, and when things are going poorly, it's like it's everyone's situation.

00:23:25 Speaker_03
Your attention maybe goes outward instead of inward.

00:23:29 Speaker_07
Yeah, and so now it's less about me, and thus narcissism dies, and it's more we're in this collective thing together.

00:23:37 Speaker_03
Well, nobody knows, but that is absolutely the explanation that is put forth in this study. The gist is that when the economy is doing great.

00:23:49 Speaker_07
Oh, so they say it's based on the economy itself.

00:23:52 Speaker_03
Well, they're just speculating just like you are. Speculate, yes. Yeah, but no, it's very consistent with what you're saying. It's like, you know, the times are good. You think that you're doing great as an individual. Like, I'm amazing.

00:24:02 Speaker_03
The article also talks about like a sense of entitlement and this antagonism that we were talking about a moment ago, this kind of like, I'm doing great relative to you.

00:24:12 Speaker_03
There's something about these times of economic growth and prosperity that incline one to think that way more on average. Not everybody, obviously, but a cultural trend.

00:24:23 Speaker_03
And then in times of economic decline, times where people are really suffering, that might lead you to be more communal, right? Your attention is going outward. I don't know whether this is been tested or even how you would test it.

00:24:40 Speaker_03
But let me just suggest another explanation for things that changed around that time in history. And again, I'm going to reference Jean Twenge because she's more recently been known for thinking about social media.

00:24:52 Speaker_03
A lot of her research is cited in this New York Times bestselling book, The Anxious Generation, by NYU professor John Haidt. You've probably heard of this book, right?

00:25:04 Speaker_07
Of course. I mean, I feel like it comes up in conversation all the time.

00:25:08 Speaker_03
So this thesis that John Haidt advances in The Anxious Generation is that the young people today think Gen Z, essentially, like they grew up in a completely different environment than he grew up in, than I grew up in, than our parents grew up in.

00:25:25 Speaker_03
And the big change is social media, this technological invention. And I don't know the exact birth date of Facebook, which was like the OG social media platform. Obviously, there's now like TikTok and there's Instagram and there's Snapchat.

00:25:40 Speaker_03
But we do know that those things did not exist in the 70s and 80s. And the book, The Anxious Generation, says that Increases in social media have led to increases in anxiety.

00:25:53 Speaker_03
It's very possible that this decrease in narcissistic personality traits is really about a decrease in self-esteem.

00:26:03 Speaker_07
I would have thought it was the opposite. This is where I was trying to figure out where you were going because I would have thought the rise of social media led to a rise in narcissism because everybody wants to be an influencer.

00:26:15 Speaker_07
And you're saying that it's having an opposite effect. I would not have guessed that.

00:26:19 Speaker_03
I find this also confusing. I, like a lot of people, you know, wanted to know what Jon Haidt, who, by the way, I think I met him even before I went to graduate school. So he was maybe one of the very first psychologists that I met.

00:26:34 Speaker_03
I've been interested to understand what he's saying about social media because he's a really accomplished, prominent social psychologist.

00:26:42 Speaker_03
But at the same time, I was talking to other people who are more expert in adolescent mental health, and they were arguing literally the exact opposite that he was arguing. They were like, there's almost no effect of social media on mental health.

00:26:55 Speaker_03
And there's a lot of evidence that it's good for, you know, many teenagers. You know, it's so complicated. And what I really think is that we need more research.

00:27:05 Speaker_03
I know we're digressing a bit from this original question about narcissism, but to the extent that there is a relationship between social media and narcissism, I do think it's worth thinking about.

00:27:18 Speaker_03
And absolutely, given that narcissistic personality inventory scores have dropped,

00:27:24 Speaker_03
Not increased since the birth of social media, which again might be a coincidence So yeah, you know the scientific jury is out right Mike I want to turn to one last piece of scientific evidence as we come to the end of this conversation on narcissism and that's a different kind of change and Here I get to be positive because there's change across the lifespan of

00:27:47 Speaker_07
Across a human's lifespan.

00:27:49 Speaker_03
Yeah across one human's lifespan, right?

00:27:51 Speaker_03
So now I'm not talking about like growing up in the 60s compared to growing up in the 80s I'm talking about, you know, Mike when he's 20 Mike when he's 30 Mike when he's 40 so that's a very different way of thinking about change and I wondered if you might share with me about how old the Narcissist that you used to work with was when I worked with him.

00:28:13 Speaker_07
The individual was in his 30s Okay.

00:28:15 Speaker_03
Well They're older now.

00:28:17 Speaker_07
Yeah.

00:28:18 Speaker_03
So there was recently a meta analysis, meaning like you take all the data that have been collected and you kind of average together what's been found.

00:28:26 Speaker_03
And in this meta analysis of narcissism across the lifespan, it's very clear that narcissism decreases. from as early as you can measure it, like as early as you're able to read and respond to questionnaires.

00:28:41 Speaker_03
I think they actually start at eight, which has got to be the very, very low end. Not a lot of data there. But the linear trend is downward all the way across to age 77, which is, I think, the span.

00:28:52 Speaker_07
Wait, peak narcissism is when you're eight years old?

00:28:55 Speaker_03
Well, I will say that it's a linear trend. So I guess so. But I will also just say that there's got to be scant data at the young end, because I never give questionnaires, honestly, to kids who are like younger than 12 or 13 at the lowest.

00:29:11 Speaker_07
Right. You're not even sure.

00:29:13 Speaker_03
Well, they're they're very. I don't want to be too confusing here. They're very egocentric in that, like, they don't actually make comparisons with others in the same way that the older among us do, right?

00:29:22 Speaker_03
Like, you ask a 9 or 10 year old how messy they are, they're like just not thinking about things the way that, like, when you ask a 16 year old, they're thinking about how messy they are relative to other people.

00:29:32 Speaker_07
Sure.

00:29:33 Speaker_03
So that's a bit of a footnote.

00:29:35 Speaker_03
But essentially, if you consider narcissism to be not a great thing, which it's not a great thing, the good news is that this linear decline suggests that maybe that narcissist that you used to work with is a little less narcissistic, at least a little bit, than they were then.

00:29:52 Speaker_07
Right. I'd love to go back to Aditi's question and just say what I would tell myself if I could go back and tell myself how I should have dealt with a narcissist in my own life.

00:30:03 Speaker_07
Because she says, what would be an effective solution to minimize their possible negative impact on society?

00:30:10 Speaker_07
I don't know that I or any of us can answer necessarily how to reduce a person's impact on society, but I will say, I wish I could go back to myself. all those years ago.

00:30:21 Speaker_03
Yeah, what would you do?

00:30:22 Speaker_07
And tell myself that it's not worth spending one minute with someone that toxic and that narcissistic and you don't have to go through that. Either get out of the situation if possible or get away from that relationship. I think I thought I had to

00:30:42 Speaker_07
endure it, and I had to just deal with it.

00:30:45 Speaker_03
You were probably thinking, like, what can I do?

00:30:47 Speaker_07
Right. And I wish I had told myself, in fact, don't do anything about this. Don't try to fix the situation. Don't try to fix the relationship. Don't try to power through.

00:30:56 Speaker_03
Don't try to bring out their non-narcissistic self. Just leave.

00:30:59 Speaker_07
Yes. In every way, yes.

00:31:01 Speaker_03
Look, I want to say something else about this meta analysis. So you look at this graph and you're like, oh, narcissism goes down some like over life and it's like a downward linear trend. You're like, yeah, people become less narcissistic.

00:31:14 Speaker_03
I think you also didn't want to wait around until the guy was like 65 when he would be

00:31:18 Speaker_07
Well, also, if they started at 100 and their linear trend is down and ends at 80.

00:31:22 Speaker_03
Well, OK, this is the thing I want to say about this meta-analysis. The meta-analysis also found that this is a fairly stable trait.

00:31:31 Speaker_03
So the rank ordering, meaning like if you line everyone up and you're like most to least narcissistic and you line them up again 20 or 30 years later, you get you know, a very similar rank ordering.

00:31:43 Speaker_03
So even though the average levels are dropping, there's a lot of stability like there is for other traits.

00:31:50 Speaker_03
And so, yeah, if you have somebody who's really narcissistic, unfortunately, in your life space, right, you can make a good educated guess that they're going to continue to be relatively narcissistic for a very long time.

00:32:07 Speaker_03
I mean, that's why it's called a personality disorder. You know, there are many forms of psychopathology that have an acute time course. It's like, you know, you have an episode of depression, for example. But personality disorders are chronic.

00:32:20 Speaker_03
And so in answer to Aditi's question, well, you gave an answer, which is leave. As you know, I'm a big fan of changing the situation. So 100 percent agree with you. But you can't leave society.

00:32:32 Speaker_00
Right.

00:32:32 Speaker_03
So like, what do you do when political candidates or whoever are narcissistic. I went and looked in this 2015 article that I've been quoting occasionally in this conversation.

00:32:42 Speaker_03
This is like the clinical perspective on narcissistic personality disorder and its treatment. And I went and looked at what they recommend to clinicians for treating clinically diagnosed individuals with narcissistic personality disorder.

00:32:59 Speaker_03
And this is incredibly depressing. It's like, well, try to use words like, as you said earlier, to like help the narcissist share your perspective, like try to be nonjudgmental and maintain inquisitive stance. And I was just like,

00:33:17 Speaker_03
imagining being a clinician who had to see people with narcissistic personality disorder all day. And I was like, oh, my gosh. So I don't think we have an answer for DT. I don't think these clinical recommendations give you much of a solution.

00:33:32 Speaker_03
I don't think your personal recommendation helps us at a society level, but maybe at least naming the fact that this is a problem. I don't know if it's a solution, but seems like a step forward.

00:33:43 Speaker_07
Maybe the idea is the more informed we are, the better we'll be able to face the situation. And that's where, as they say, knowledge is power.

00:33:55 Speaker_01
Coming up after the break, a fact check of today's episode and stories from our NSQ listeners. And now here's a fact check of today's conversation. Angela says that the myth of Narcissus predates the invention of mirrors.

00:34:25 Speaker_01
However, the earliest known manufactured mirrors found in modern-day Turkey date back 8,000 years, much earlier than ancient Greece, and were made with volcanic glass. Mirrors were also used throughout antiquity.

00:34:40 Speaker_01
We see evidence of this in depictions of people gazing at hand mirrors found on ancient Greek pottery. Angela is also slightly incorrect about the history of covered mirrors.

00:34:51 Speaker_01
The practice, which has been documented across many cultures, has long been associated with mourning. Many Jewish people still practice the tradition during Shabbat as a display of humility and to focus attention on the deceased.

00:35:05 Speaker_01
Also, we should clarify that the subtypes of narcissism that Angela describes, grandiose and vulnerable, have been documented extensively in recent psychological research, but they're not differentiated in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

00:35:21 Speaker_01
And some researchers argue that these two subtypes of narcissism should be broken down further. Later, Angela refers to Facebook as the OG social media platform. Facebook was founded in 2004 and became available to the public in 2006.

00:35:38 Speaker_01
Several other social networking platforms came earlier, including MySpace and Hi5, which were founded in 2003, Friendster in 2002, LiveJournal in 1999, and Six Degrees in 1997.

00:35:54 Speaker_01
One final note, listeners who want to know more about Jean Twenge and Jonathan Haidt's work on teenagers and social media might like to check out episode 602 of Freakonomics Radio. Is screen time as poisonous as we think? That's it for the fact check.

00:36:11 Speaker_01
Before we wrap today's show, let's hear some thoughts on last week's episode about parents oversharing about their kids, both on and offline.

00:36:20 Speaker_05
Hi, Angela and Mike, this is John Rurie from Lawrence, Kansas. I think that many people would see this as a cultural phenomenon, as a sort of example of this.

00:36:31 Speaker_05
We were in Iceland last year and made some friends and were at the house of one of them, Peter, and his wife Efta mentioned that their son lived in Boston.

00:36:41 Speaker_05
It took us quite a while and many questions to finally ascertain that he was a PhD student in mathematics at Harvard.

00:36:48 Speaker_05
Of course, for many Americans this would be a point of great pride and among the first things that we would hear about this young man, but in Iceland this was not something that was a focal point at all.

00:37:01 Speaker_05
I think Annette Leroux at Penn would say that this is a status-affirming behavior among educated Americans and, of course, in places like Iceland and many other parts of the world, values are quite different and behavior is different accordingly.

00:37:17 Speaker_00
Hi Mike and Angela. I have a fairly mobile job that takes my family literally to different continents every few years.

00:37:24 Speaker_00
When my kids were little, it was comforting to share my children's lives on social media with family and also with friends that live similar lives, because they're in a sense my tribe, my proverbial village that it takes to raise a child.

00:37:37 Speaker_00
It was a pleasure laughing together at my kids' silliest moments, but also receiving their advice and words of wisdom, and also seeing kids grow up as well.

00:37:45 Speaker_00
Now as my little ones are getting older, I've almost stopped sharenting completely at this point, but I do mourn that sense of virtual community that we used to have with these people that have pretty much seen our kids since birth.

00:37:57 Speaker_02
Hello, Angela and Mike. I am firmly in the camp of not posting photos of my children online.

00:38:03 Speaker_02
Not only am I friends with many people I am loosely in contact with, I feel that our kids deserve the space and non-permanence to grow into their own and define who they are.

00:38:13 Speaker_02
Seeing posts from parents showcasing what their children are doing as a memory is one thing. But we all know the dopamine hit that parent is receiving when someone likes or comments that photo.

00:38:25 Speaker_02
To me, it turns into a cycle of posting children for psychological gain that the parent is receiving. Ultimately, we live in a world where everything is trying to steal our attention.

00:38:35 Speaker_02
Instead of posting about my children, I try my best to be as present and engaged by storing my phone away during family time. I believe my lack of sharing will allow my children to grow up in the anonymity they deserve.

00:38:48 Speaker_02
And should they choose to have a lively online presence in the future, it will be their choice, their voice, their perspective, not mine.

00:38:57 Speaker_01
That was, respectively, John Rurie and two listeners who would like to remain anonymous. Thanks to them and to everyone who shared their stories with us. And remember, we'd love to hear your thoughts on narcissism.

00:39:09 Speaker_01
Send a voice memo to nsq at Freakonomics.com and you might hear your voice on the show. Coming up next week on No Stupid Questions, are attention spans really shrinking?

00:39:25 Speaker_03
That's coming up on No Stupid Questions.

00:39:32 Speaker_01
No Stupid Questions is part of the Freakonomics Radio network, which also includes Freakonomics Radio, People I Mostly Admire, and The Economics of Everyday Things. All our shows are produced by Stitcher and Renbud Radio.

00:39:46 Speaker_01
The senior producer of the show is me, Rebecca Lee Douglas, and Lyric Bowditch is our production associate. This episode was mixed by Greg Rippin with help from Jasmine Klinger and Eleanor Osborne. We had research assistance from Daniel Moritz-Rabson.

00:40:02 Speaker_01
Our theme song was composed by Luis Guerra. You can follow us on Twitter at NSQ underscore show, and you can watch video clips of Mike and Angela at the Freakonomics Radio Network's YouTube Shorts channel or on Freakonomics Radio's TikTok page.

00:40:17 Speaker_01
To learn more or to read episode transcripts, visit Freakonomics.com slash NSQ. Thanks for listening.

00:40:26 Speaker_07
Narcissist. That is such a hard word to say.

00:40:29 Speaker_03
I know. It's a tongue twister.

00:40:36 Speaker_01
The Freakonomics Radio Network. The hidden side of everything.

00:40:43 Speaker_00
Stitcher.