Is Today's Generation More Narcissistic Than Previous Ones?

Literature Review In the 1960’s words such as “trendsetter” or “biohazard” were being added to the oxford dictionary, now–a-days we see the addition of words such as “selfie”, causing many to raise the question; Is today’s generation more narcissistic than previous ones? Both sides of the debate define narcissism as a style of inflated self-admiration and the constant attempt to draw attention to the self and to keep others focused on oneself (Twenge & Foster, 2010). The advocates of a more narcissistic generation argue that the self-esteem movement of the mid 1900s is the root cause of the increase in narcissism in today’s generation. The advocates claim that with the self-esteem movement, changes within other dimensions support the assertion

Roberts found in his samples effect sizes that while not strong, could lead to the next line of research. When his sample was looked at parental interaction and demographic aspects, he found inconsistencies. When looking at sex, men were more narcissistic than women at any particular age (Roberts, Edmonds, Grijalva, 2010). When looking at ethnicity, the results showed that African Americans scored higher than any other ethnic group and, contrary to findings in previous research, the Asian groups did not score significantly lower than the other ethnicities (Roberts, Edmonds, Grijalva, 2010). Roberts and colleagues believe that further research looking at demographics is needed when talking about an increase in narcissism over generations. Building off Roberts’ indication that development may be a cause of narcissism, Dentale and colleagues (2015) looked at parental narcissism, specifically to see if parental narcissism is related to children’s depression and anxiety, while also looking to see if this relationship is mediated by the rearing style of the offspring (Dentale et al., 2015). What Dentale found was that parental narcissism, maternal or paternal, was the predictor, the Parental Bonding Instrument (PBI), or rearing style, was the offspring behavior, specifically anxiety and depression (Dentale et al.,