Faculty of Psychology University of Bucharest

Influence of age on narcissistic tendencies

Coordinating teacher: Gtej Emil Rzvan

Research conducted by: Burcu Eliza Ginaru Roxana Morar Anca Psepolschi Mihaela Stnescu Andreea Terente Ioana

1. Abstract Starting from the idea that age influences the narcisstic traits, this researchs purpose is to search if age is positively correlated to different stages of narcissism.Therefore weve extracted two samples : the adolescence sample(34) and the young adults sample(25) which were tested with a questionnaire that measures the narcissism level :NPI-Narcisstic Personality Inventory .The data which resulted from the subjects was then analized in SPSS revealing that there is a positive correlation between age and narcisstic tendencies teenagers being more narcisstic then young adults.

Keywords: narcissism tendencies , age , teenagers , young adults 2. Introduction According to Paul Popescu Neveanu (1978) , Narcissism, abnormal condition characterized by intense love to ones own physical or mental qualities (p. 473). Chad Mason and Karen Brackman describe the narcisstics traits (2009) as having a grandiose sense of self-importance , he considers himself as being special and that he should associate only with high status people ,requires excessive admiration , lacks of empathy , he is envious of others and feels like others are envious on him and is arrogant. The term narcissism was first introduced in psychology by Sigmund Freud.He considered narcissism as a phase in sexual development where the person perceives his own body as a love object.Freud divided narcissism in primary and secondary: in the primary the ego loves the image of his own body , the secondary was considered as being a pathological return to the primary one in early childhood. (Moncayo , 2008). Over the time researchers questioned when does narcissism appear ,what factors contribute at his appearing and how stable is it over time.Unfortunately is hard to reply with empirical proof at this questions because of the lack of longitudinal experiments which could had made possible a deeper understanding of the development of narcissism. Most theorists believe that the development of narcissism begins in the early stages of life , one theory sustains that parents make their children feel superior by over indulging and paraising them a lot (apud. Imbesi, 1999; Millon, 1981) , another theory holds that the coldness and indifference of parents may determine their child to put himself on a pedestal for obtaining the validation that their parents didn t showed ( apud. Morf & Rhodewalt, 2001). Beside parental influence is believed that also school favors narcissism by teaching children theyre special and unique.Late childhood is a critical moment for the development of narcissism because the kid gains cognitive abilities like:the ability to anticipate how they are viewed by others and to form evaluations of their worth and the desire to feel valuable appears. In adolescence it is belived that the features of narcissism are part of a defensive , compensatory system which would help the teenager to cope with different aspects of ego development and separation-individuation ( apud. Blos, 1962 ; Josselson, 1988) . The narcissistic

reactions appear to fortify the teenager against the vulnerabilities that appear in the developmental transition: the loss of childhood identification , becoming independent , shed parental dependencies. In this stage narcissism helps maintaining self-esteem.Although at some level narcisstic reactions are positive ,researchers proved that teens that overestimate their capacities tend to be more aggressive which continues even in adulthood.In a study young adults who scored high on NPI and received failure feedback responded with significantly more aggresivity then those who had lower score on NPI. Our study aims to demonstrate that adolescents have narcissistic tendencies more pronounced than young people. 3. Methodology a) Objectives and hypotheses Objectives Our study aims to examine how age affects narcissistic tendencies, namely the fact that teenagers are more narcissistic than young. Hypothesis Adolescents have narcissistic tendencies more pronounced than young b) Research variables The independent variable is represented by the two age groups (teens and younger) and the dependent variable is the degree of narcissism. c) Subjects The study was carried out in 59 subjects aged between 15 and 26. If we want to shape the distribution of subjects by gender comprising, samples comprising 24 men and 35 women. Sampling was not random and we used two independent samples consisting of 34 adolescents and 25 young.

d) Instruments The Narcissistic Personality Inventory is a widely measure of narcissism in social psychological research. In our research, we used a forty-item forced-choice version, elaborated by Raskin and Terry. This is based on the DSM-III clinical criteria for narcissistic personality disorder, even thought is designed by measure these features in the general population, in our case teenagers and students. Even though the NPI was designed to measure the subclinical narcissism, a very high score (more than 18) is not necessarily mean narcissistic personality disorder. There are seven factors of NPI analyzed: authority, superiority, exhibitionism, vanity, exploaitativeness and self-sufficiency, despite the fact that NPI exhibit very low internal consistency, it is reliable. In conclusion, the factor structure of NPI is unknow (there are versions with three or four factors). Our subjects must choose the affirmations, the statements that are best matching with them. It is considered important which traits were dominant. The seven component traits by question: Authority: 1, 8, 10, 11, 12, 32, 33, 36 Self-sufficiency: 17, 21, 22, 31, 34, 39 Superiority: 4, 9, 26, 37, 40 Exhibitionism: 2, 3, 7, 20, 28, 30, 38 Exploitativeness: 6, 13, 16, 23, 35 Vanity: 15, 19, 29 Entitlement: 5, 14, 18, 24, 25, 27 The average score for the general population is 15.3. The average score for celebrities is 17.8. Pinsky says he scored 16. e) Procedura Subjects were explained how to fill out the NPI and were asked to respond as objectivel as possible. Responses were individual. 4. Results We used the t test for independent samples within SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) to test our hypothesis and to prove that age is one of the factors influencing narcissistic tendencies. We analyzed each age group (adolescents and youth) in Table 1:

Table 1 Group Statistics categoria de varsta din are face parte subiectul scorul obtinut de subiect la testul NPI 1 2 N Mean Std. Deviation Std. Error Mean

34 25

21,03 17,08

6,562 7,393

1,125 1,479

It can be seen that the average teen is 21.33 and the mean for young people in terms of narcissism test score is 17.08. Also, there is a difference between the number of subjects in the two groups, but this is not very high so that it does not affect the results of the research. We observed from the t test for independent samples that is a significant difference between the two groups in terms of narcissistic tendencies. This led to the confirmation of our hypothesis, namely the fact that adolescents tend to be more narcissistic than young. We put that on the table 2. Table 2

Independent Samples Test Levene's Test for Equality of Variances F Sig. t-test for Equality of Means

df

Sig. (2tailed) ,035

scorul obtinut de subiect la testul NPI

Equal variances assumed Equal variances not assumed

,551

,461

2,165

57

2,125

48,115

,039

Levene's test indicates that variances of the two compared groups are equal (p = 0.4) as the obtained p is greater than 0.05 so we can read the results of the first line. Therefore, the research hypothesis, that adolescents have narcissistic tendencies than young on a sample of 18 adolescents (m1 = 21.33) and a sample of 24 young (m2=17.08 ) for t = 2.16 and p = 0.03, df = 57. Effect size shows a negligible association between the degree of narcissism and the two age groups (2 = 0.05). Confidence interval (95%) for the difference between the average is between the lower value 0,29 and upper value 7,6 expressing a reduced accuracy of the estimate due to differences in average first volumes of the groups compared.

5. Interpretation of results We previously showed that our hypothesis was confirmed, that teenagers are more narcissistic than young and assume that this is due primarily to the fact that teenagers are still in search of their own image that currently prefer to regard as good. They do not really know who they are or who they are limits, but normally, they feel good, really good in this case, what you can do and who we are. It is much easier to accept that you're a great person but the opposite this observation. Young people know their limits and get to know them-self very well, therefore exacerbating their traits is not a process to influence in any way self-image. Vanity, superiority, exhibitionism and exploitation are traits that define narcissistic behavior, and they, as can be seen not define a personality that wants to be mature. This is the second reason why we believe that our hypothesis proved to be valid. Effect size is also large enough to show an association between age and degree of significant narcissism. It would be interesting from this point of view to study how sad or narcissistic tendencies increase with age. Our research has shown that narcissistic tendencies tend to decrease with age. Therefore, a person's degree of narcissism correlate with maturity with how he treats other people, the environment and influence the process by which the person resolve issues of life. 6. Conclusion The main purpose of our project was to reveal the influence of age on narcissistic tendencies on people. For that, we used two groups of females and males, divided in young and adolescents. In order to demonstrate our hypothesis, we asked them to take a 40 item survey regarding narcissistic tendencies. After analyzing the results, we found out that younger people have less narcissistic tendencies than adolescents, fact that confirms our theory. Because the age difference between the two groups is not that big, we can conclude that the change in narcissistic tendencies occurs when the teen becomes an adolescent. This period comes with many new challenges, leaving high school and going to college, learning to be more

responsible and to do something for a living and also being more competitive when it comes to school and work. Confidence and knowing your own strengths are two important values in an adolescent's life, that's why being a little more narcissist than you were before can somehow help you reach you goals. It is important to realise the difference between being aware of how good you are and being a narcissist because it can make a serious difference in your future self-esteem. Studies have shown that people who have a realistic image of themselves have better chances to succeed than people who overestimate themselves, mainly because they choose to hope for more realisable goals. In conclusion, age is an influence on narcissist tendencies on people, fact revealed by our research on adolescents and young. Adolescents have higher narcissist tendencies because people have much more expectations from them than they had when they were younger. The fine line between having a narcissist personality disorder and knowing you own strengths it also very important because it can decide your future successes or fails and your self-esteem. 7. Discussions and further studies Our study focused on the possible correlation between adolescents and young adults regarding the level of narcissism innate in each of the two. In that sense, we surmised that there is a certain link between an established age, and how highly one regards ones self. By asking each of our subjects to complete a survey measuring their level o narcissism (namely, the NPI), we later compared results between high school students and university students. Seeing as how our subjects were chosen based on that one criterion, we agreed that there was little chance of bias regarding gender or school specialization. After having examined the results gathered, we saw that adolescents scored higher levels of narcissism than young adults, as can be seen in the two tables above. While we did not put forward a theory whether one should have display higher levels than the other, we are pleased to see that our study revealed to us a certain course of action, by pointing us into a valid direction. However, we do not wish to confine ourselves to this study alone, and we wish to suggest conducting several similar studies, not only between adolescents and youth, but also youth and adults, adults and elders, youth and elders, and so on. Returning to our own study, we consider that a re-evaluation would be more than welcome, and with a few changes. For example, we would definitely like to expand our number of subjects, so as to obtain a more conclusive result; another possible change would be the method of measuring by using a different survey, meant to analyze the same hypothesis, we might be able to firmly confirm our idea. However, despite these possible future changes, we expect our study to come to the same conclusion that adolescents have higher levels of innate narcissism than young adults do.

8. Reference List Popescu Neveanu , P. (1978) . Dictionar de Psihologie. Bucuresti; Editura Albatros. Mason , C., & Brackman , K. (2009). Educating Today's Overindulged Youth Combat Narcissism by Building Foundations, Not Pedestals. Plymouth: Rowman & Littlefield Education. Moncayo , R . (2008). Evolving Lacanian Perspectives for Clinical Psychoanalysis_ On Narcissism, Sexuation, and the Phases Faces of Analysis in Contemporary Culture. London: Karnac Books Ltd Thomaes, S., & Brummelman , E., & Reijntjjies , A., & Bushman J.B., (2012). Child Development Perspectives. When Narcissus Was a Boy: Origins, Nature, and Consequences of Childhood Narcissism , 22-26. Washburn , J.J., & McMahon, S.D., &Cheryl, A.K., & Mark A. R., & Silver , C. (2004) Journal of Youth and Adolescence. Narcissistic Features in Young Adolescents: Relations to Aggression and Internalizing Symptoms . 247-260. http://www3.nd.edu 12.12.2013 http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/health/2009-03-16-pinsky-quiz_N.htm 12.12.2013