The popular view that young people are more self-absorbed than ever thanks to their parents’ fixation on self-esteem stands challenged by two large new studies.
For the past 25 years, California college students have scored about the same on a test that measures narcissism — qualities such as arrogance and a sense of entitlement, says psychologist Kali Trzesniewski of the University of Western Ontario. Her report covers more than 26,000 students.
Another analysis she did from a large annual survey of high school seniors suggests kids are no more conceited today than they were 30 years ago. The gap between their grades and how they rated their intelligence was no greater in 2006 than 1976, says Trzesniewski, whose studies are in the February Psychological Science.
“They’re not becoming more over-confident,” she says.
The idea that baby-boomer parents have spawned a generation of self-important egotists took hold in the wake of research by Jean Twenge, a psychologist at San Diego State University. Twenge wrote a widely publicized 2006 book called Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled — and More Miserable Than Ever Before.
