An increased obsession with self?

Faculty and students comment on a study stating that college students are more narcissistic

By: Nick Ngo

Posted: 3/5/07

A risk for infidelity, lack of emotional warmth, dishonesty, overly-controlling and violent behaviors - these are some of the symptoms listed for a narcissistic person according to an Associated Press article stating that college students are more narcissistic than ever.

Published on Feb. 27, the article reported on a national study of 16,475 college students between 1982 and 2006. The students completed an evaluation called the Narcissistic Personality Inventory.

"The researchers describe their study as the largest ever of its type and say students' NPI scores have risen steadily since the current test was introduced in 1982," the article said. "By 2006, they said, two-thirds of the students had above-average scores, 30 percent more than in 1982."

OSU Psychology Department Chair Frank Bernieri said the article was one of those fun things in the department that instructors talked about.

"I actually laughed when I first read it because it reported results that rang true," Bernieri said. "In other words, it was one of those things where someone seemed to have documented something that you thought to be taking place already."

Bernieri said that he has informally observed this trend.

"I've talked with instructors who have been teaching a while," Bernieri said. "We have mentioned the apparent trend of students feeling higher levels of entitlement for various aspects of the college enterprise."

For example, final exam schedules are chosen randomly in an effort to make things fair and avoid conflicts with other tests. Bernieri said that in the past, students were OK with the scheduling time. He said that now students are making requests to take exams earlier in the week in order to go home earlier.

Bernieri said that that logic is ignoring the fairness for others in an institution with thousands of students.

"If an instructor doesn't comply with the student's request and they get angry, that anger is coming from a sense of entitlement where a student really believes they are entitled to get that exam even though no one else in the class is," Berneiri said. "The increasing irritation and hostility on students for not being accommodated is increasing."

John Edwards, an associate professor of psychology, said his first reaction to the article was that it wasn't really informative. He's waiting for further study and review of the subject to be published in a psychology journal.

"The study is not in a peer review journal, it's just something they presented at, I think, a workshop," Edwards said. "What that means is you really have no idea [of] the quality of the study. It may be fine, but until it shows in a journal or you get more details about it, it's hard to judge."

Edwards has been at OSU for 10 years and finds it hard to believe that narcissistic traits are in students.

"The students here are pretty cool - I don't see a lot of emotional rises out of them too much. That's probably just the culture of the Northwest," Edwards said.

Edwards said there are two types of narcissism, a Narcissistic Personality Disorder and levels of narcissism - a continuum with different levels. Edwards said the article was referring to students on a continuum of narcissism, not Narcissitic Personality Disorder.

Bernieri said narcissism is a chronic personality trait that doesn't develop in college but rather during childhood.

Generally, it has something to do with a lack of limit setting and over indulgence of child's demands and requests, he said.

"If you can think of if you gave a child everything they wanted while telling them 'you're perfect, you're wonderful,' that's a way to create a narcissistic person," Bernieri said.

Scott Safford, an assistant professor of psychology, said people who are narcissistic do not admit that they're narcissistic. He also believes the term is negative and it depends on the level of self-absorption to use it.

Safford said narcissism can be traced back to the self-esteem movement in the 1980s. Safford said low self-esteem is considered bad and can cause depression, so the movement was to help raise the self-esteem of children.

With the movement helping boost children's self esteem, Safford said a healthy sense of narcissism is fine.

"That's where a person thinks 'I'm a good and average person. I don't suck, that's fine,'" Safford said. "They're aware of what they're good and bad at."

However, when a person is pampered too much with compliments and awards, it leads them to believe that they're special.

"Which is not bad, but then they're starting to think they're better than everybody else," Safford said. "It's healthy to a certain extent, but it's not healthy when it leads you to something you're not entitled to work for."

Freshman Dennis Risser doesn't think that most students are narcissistic, but select individuals are self-absorbed.

"Maybe some teachers," Risser said. "However, there are people who are stuck up, especially one guy in my dorm who he thinks he's better than everybody else."

Junior Lindsay Bryant said her generation as a whole is heading toward that direction. She said the current generation was similar to the older "me" generation and that advertisers help gear them toward that mentality.

Freshman Alex Ursin also rejects the idea of students being narcissistic.

"It's not like people think 'just because we went to college so we're better than everybody else'." Ursin said.