Narcissism: But what about me?

Welcome to Stuff you should know from how stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and Noel is with us again today. No guest producer, Noel. That's right. So this Chuck stuff you should know. I'm gonna start whispering every few lines. You know what we should do? What we so everybody knows a lot of people know some people know a lot of people listen to stuff you should know to fall asleep. Well, actually they're probably not

asleep yet. We should wait a few minutes to do this. Are you're gonna say start screaming every ten minutes or nothing like that. We'll just start telling them things and they're sleep to tell other people later, like subliminal stuff. Oh like subscribe to movie Crush. Yeah, that's a good one. Send us a dollar Yeah, why not make it too. They have two dollar bills, you know, so, um, all right,

well that we'll do that later. We'll insort a movie Crush subliminal message later for the people who are sleeping. Did you ever get two dollar bills? His gifts from wacky relatives? Yep. That they'd hand you that card with a two dollar bill and they're flapping. Dickie would roll up to their cheek and they'd say, here's something that you shouldn't spend. Like great, thanks for nothing. Yeah, I

know it was. It was weird. They're almost like works of art, but novelty like X ray specs or something like that. Yea, we should we should do it stuff you should know. Short episode on the two dollar bill do we have those? No? Okay with that, the the inaugural one. Yeah, SYSK shorts okay, like six minute episodes like the old days. Okay, we'll get back to that.

I'll save us a lot of time every week if we do those or maybe yeah, we should just do those and not the deep dives that we've become known for. Over the best in years and kiss our careers, goodbye, goodbye careers, Thank you for coming. So narcissism, Oh, let's let's get to it. Let's get serious. How do you

feel about all this? Um? So anytime, Chuck, when you and I are researching one of these things separately, of course, But when we're researching these, I'm always going, like the mental health ones, I'm always like, um, is this me? Is this describing me? And sometimes they do, you know? And this one is is no exception. There are certainly some parts to it, but as we'll see later, I fall toward more toward one end of the spectrum than another. But either way, I would not say that I'm clinical

in any sense of the word. As a narcissist, I'm pretty sure. So yeah, how about you. Did you sit there and think about me while you're researching this too? It sounds like a narcissistic statement. Uh No, I didn't. I didn't think about myself. If that's what you were really asking, it was because I think I'm probably the opposite of a narcissist. So you just walk around thinking like I'm just not good enough all the time. No, because, as we will learn, many narcissists at their core think

that deep down. Well, yeah, that's actually supposed to be one of the defining traits of narcissism, which is kind of surprising for people who don't know about it, because when you think narcissists, you think just a complete conceited jackass who's just totally self involved and couldn't care less about you and your family and the fact that you've got like a whole being worn in the one sweater you will. They don't care about that. They just want

to push you around and take your pocket change. That's a narcissist. And yeah, I have had a lot of experience with narcissists in my life though, so I have a a lot to say about it. Probably won't say much of it because of protecting the innocent. You could use like pseudonyms like um, like I know this narcissist, I've worked with him for a decade. His name is

squash Park. That would work. I think that would protect people. Yeah, I think my definition of narcissism after reading this especially too, is uh, it's probably less clinical and more experiential for me, which is basically just a general, singular point of view that is only from that person's eyeballs, like an an inability to like see anything from anyone else's point of view other than their own, and not even recognizing that

that's happening. Well, I yeah, I think that's kind of part of it too, is is you're so sure you're right and and just so confident in your own answers and thoughts and beliefs that that it would be basically impossible to see anyone else's perspective. So whatever the opposite, I have a clinical problem with putting myself in other places too much, to a debilitating degree. Probably, Yeah, am I putting that person out? Am? I? Oh my gosh? Did I get in that person's way? Did I do

something to upset someone? I wonder if that compliment I gave the checkout clerk of the grocery store was nice enough? Is that what you do? No? Not really? All right. I think you're just fairly emotionally stable, and your personality is pretty stable too. I don't think you have a lot to worry about either way. Well, maybe not that small realm of my life, but no, I mean personality was you got a pretty pretty good solid personality, Chuck.

I appreciate that, yeah, man. And and you know, one of the things that stuck out to me when I was researching this is this is pretty much a persistent theme with psychology. Is psychology is the study of how you're failing to fit into society in a good way, you know, like that's the whole point of it, because we've assigned psychology this this um role of determining what's normal, who's normal, who's not, and then hopefully treating the people

who aren't normal. But really that's that that definition of normalcy comes down to. We all live in society and either you've you fit in pretty well or you don't fit in, and there's you know, a spectrum in between. And that's what psychology does, is look at all the different ways people have trouble fitting in in a peaceful, quiet, uh socially acceptable manner, and this is this is one of them. This is one of the most prominent ones.

And one of the reasons it is so prominent is because narcissism um, the word itself, has almost lost entire early it's clinical meaning because it's been so thoroughly hijacked by pop culture, which has been fostered, I have to say, by some psychologists in the field who who you know, used pop culture to point to the idea that narcissism is on the rise or whatever. So it's it's almost

just completely lost its meaning. Um, And there's a lot of questions about, you know, how meaningful is a diagnosis of narcissism these days. Um, it seems like there is still some agreement that there is what you would consider a personality disorder right called narcissistic personality disorder, and that it's exceedingly rare. I saw something like two thousand people

in the United States probably have it. That's really rare, but that there is possibly such a thing as a trait that a person can have which you would call narcissism, which if you're saying all that person is so narcissistic, that's what you would be referring to, and you could conceivably call at a subclinical level of narcissism. But that's

increasingly coming into greater and greater question. Yeah, Like to me, I think it fully exists on a spectrum, and we'll get to all this because other people feel like uh, scientists feel like it does as well. But um, that's for that's for later in the episode. Well, let's let's do something really radically weird, and let's actually start by defining narcissism. Actually, let's do something even weirder, chalk. Let's

start with a nice little dollarp of mythology. Okay, you want to sure the story of Narcissus, which you're laughing at. It's like to too. So what do you say narcissist? Oh? Interesting, I have You're not the first person to say it like that, though, I have heard narcissus, and I think it's usually British people who say it like that. See, I might be getting it from the Indigo Girl song. Did that? I don't remember that one? Which one? Uh? Can you sing a little bit uh hammer and a nail?

I think, yes, I don't know the narcis There's a line where they say I look a lot like Narcissus. Huh, yeah, that's probably where you got it. Then, I mean, I'm sure that's where I got it, and probably had never heard anyone say it before. Emily sailors Man, that's I don't know, all right, so Narcissus was in the in the myth was a apparently he was a boy that was so beautiful and so good looking. And this is

how these myths go. They're always kind of, you know, little hokey, uh like, this is the child that is so good looking that they will just destroy their lives in the world with their good looks. And so a prophet name Teresius. Does that? Does that sound right? Okay? Yeah, I have no issues with that, all right, said to said to the parents, prince, you better make sure this kid Narcissus never sees himself because it's gonna be big trouble. And do you think he's bad? Now? Wait until so

the parents are like, all right, I got you. No mirrors in the house, no uh, no shiny brass babbles, no stainless steel refrigerator, no windows, no nothing in our house that's reflective because we gotta keep our son from seeing himself. Yeah. And so I guess they were pretty successful for a while for basically the kid's whole life. And as Narcissus or narcissist men, you've got me going now. Um. As he grew older, he was clearly aware of his looks,

because he he would anybody who fell for him. He'd be like, yeah, you're you're great, but you're not good enough for me. I'm sorry. Um, takeoff, hoser, was his famous line. And so all the hosers would take off and cry and cry and cry, And so he knew he was good looking, but he still hadn't seen himself. And um, one of the hosers that he told to take off was a I think a wood nymph, right,

wasn't she? Or she was some sort Yeah, she was a nymph named Echo, and Echo was just had it about as bad for narcissust as as a nymph could possibly have it for a good looking boy. And she said, I'm so sad. I'm just going to just lie here and cry. And she cried and cried and cried so much so that she became nothing more than her own voice, which you can still hear if you shout into the in the mountains, and that's where the echo comes from.

So he went on along this path, kind of leaving a trail of of ladies in his wake, uh, helplessly heartbroken until finally, and he should have known this was coming because her name of this Goddess was Nemesis right, so you should have been steered clear there. But he only wrong to Nemesis and broke her heart. And she was like, well, you know what, my name is Nemesis for a reason, and uh, I'm gonna punish you, sir.

Uh here, walk with me to this pool and look down upon yourself, or maybe you're a little bit thirsty. So he went down to get some water and he was like, hellay, look at that fella. And he was in love with himself. Yeah, he fell head over heels in love with himself. But there's a couple of problems with this. This this whole story would have gone totally different. Had Narcissis been like, I'm in love with myself, I'm going to take that self love and turn it into

something really great and share that with the world. Right, it's going to be self confidence and productivity. I'm gonna fit into society just perfectly. But that's not what happened because it was a superficial love. He was in love with how he looked, right. The problem with that is is he could never have himself. It takes a mate, another person. It's another big thing in society too, Right,

you gotta couple up right, Um. So he was doomed forever to have an unrequited love for himself, and so since the closest he could get was his reflection, he just stayed by that pool forever and ever and ever look at him and turned into a flower, the narcissist flower. Yeah, a John Queel flower. Yeah. They're very pretty. It's like a daffodil, a nice daffodil. Yeah. So that's the story of where it came from. And uh, well, now we should define it because you promise that so that that

story is pretty old. I think it's Greek at least, if not maybe even older than that. UM. But in the nineteenth century the Victorians realized that this is a pretty good, pretty good allegory for a certain type of person.

And these type of people today now we know. I guess the classical definition of a of a narcissist or a clinical clinical narcissist is basically somebody who's sense of self importance UM, and a sense of entitlement that arises from that sense of self importance is so great and so ridiculously over exaggerated and so in a lot of ways unfounded that UM it leads to a lot of harm in their life. They have a lot of trouble. They there. It's usually pretty easy for them to make

new friendships, but they don't last very long. They have trouble accepting criticism. They may lash out, they may be aggressive, They're usually fairly extroverted. Again, this is the classical clinical

criteria for um for a narcissist um. And they apparently, like you said before, are harboring at their base, a real lack of genuine self esteem or a real lack of genuine self love, and that that lack is so deep and so profound that it's reflected conversely on the outside as just utter and complete arrogance and disregard for other people's feelings. Yes, that is the classical definition or criteria for a narcissist. But as we'll learn, there's another.

There's actually two sides to that same narcissism coin. Yes, so let's go back to some more of the history there. Like you said, the Victorians, they were all into this,

you know, kind of burgeoning psychoanalysis labeling of things. And in the late eighteen nineties there was a sexologist name Havelock Ellis, and I really By the way, I hated all these little parenthetical uh in this article on how stuff works, it's these little parenthetical asides, little judgments that this all they wrote, like Havelock Ellis, that's his real aim, Like have Luck Ellis, that's a I mean, have a lack is an interesting name, but it's not like unbelievable

in it. Can you believe this, folks? He sucked me. He's not normal, and it gets worse. I'll point out all three. Thank you, buddy, I'm glad I'm plodding for you. Then well, what bugs you bugs me? Most likely? You know what's what's great is is that's absolutely true. Like when I'm researching I I can That's why I knew you were thinking of me when when researching narcissism, because

I was thinking of myself too. Uh. So have Alack Ellis said that if you masturbate a lot, then you're sort of a narcissist or narcissist like yeah, and you're making the saints cry that's right. Uh. And then others came along he said, yeah, this is this is a thing.

In the early nineteen hundreds, like a nineteen eleven there was another analyst name Otto Rank, who said a no snarky comment about that name, um put out a paper that he's he really kind of dug into narcissism and went beyond the just sexual nature of Havelock Ellis and said, this is just a more generalized definition of someone who is sort of self obsessed, right right, So he kind of, yeah, he took it into a bit of a condition, a

personality type. You could say, I think it's yeah, Um, we should do I don't know Havelock Ellis had anything to do with it, but you know, so like Graham crackers were invented to prevent people from masturbating so much, how does that work? It was just totally made up, but it was this part of um, like that whole Road to Wellville kind of thing to you you ever see that movie with Anthony Hopkins. I know the movie. I never saw it. Same here, I never saw it either.

We should watch it together, all right, But um, we should also do a whole podcast on that whole that late nineteenth century like nutrition for like life improvement. Okay, we're gonna do that episod. So after Havelock Ellison Auto Rank, there was get this guy's name, Sigmund Freud. He comes along after Rank, Uh, and I don't think that was the first time. I feel like I've seen their names together before in plenty of other ways. Um, at the

very least they were contemporaries. Because three years after Rank said, you know what, I think this narcissism thing goes beyond people who engage in self abuse a little too often. Um, Freud came along and he hit the nail on the head, as I think, I think Freud's gonna be like a religious icon in three or five or thousand years. I really think so. I think this guy really got a lot of stuff right in a lot of ways that he he stopped getting credit for. And I think the

reason why is this chuck. He he has pigeonholed into the compartment of psychology, where I think he was a psychoanalyst. He was a psychologist, but I think more than anything, he was one of the great thinkers who's ever lived. And I think the idea that you're approaching everything at him or everything he's ever said, from the idea that this is a psychologist saying this, rather than this is a great thinker who can think or talk about anything has said it kind of makes you makes people miss

the mark a little bit on him. If he had been noted more for his philosophy, then yeah, his psychology. The Yeah, I think, I think you'd have a lot more credibility in the world. Well, he came along and in terms of narcissism said, you know what, I think, not only is it psycho sexual in nature, but I think everybody goes through this phase at some point. But you are only a true narcissist if you don't progress past that phase. Basically yep. And that's kind of still today.

So that was what nineteen fourteen when he came up with that theory. That's basically still pretty well established, so much so that it's it's not even attributed to Freud anymore. It's just like, yeah, that's human nature. You as you age, you enter into a period of self love that that you would basically call a narcissistic phase, and then as you get a little older and mellow out, you start to turn your love towards other people in the world

in general, and that's part of a natural personality development. Yeah, but it's still It took a psychoanalyst name Robert Velte who finally said, this is an actual um, an actual personality type, right, that we should study. And then William Wilhelm excuse me, vill Helm Reich parenthetical three Austrians in

a row with the next exclamation point. Uh. So he came along and said that, well, first of all, narcissists are almost always men um and the thinking on that is not true anymore, although I still think usually men are thought up to be narcissist. Yeah, it's typically considered

a male dominated condition, right yeah. Uh and he basically he he kind of put in words that link between masculinity and this narcissistic aggression that kind of can come along with being a narcissist, right, he said, it's dude. That was his big contribution. So then the along came a woman, a German psychoanalyst named Karen Horney. Go ahead, parenthetical. Finally a woman and yes that's her real name too, Okay, thank you, chuck um. And in nine Karen Horney should

we say the parenthetical every time we say her name? No, No, it's probably a bad idea. So Karen Horney came along in nine and she's like, all right, everybody shut up, I've got this figured out. This article misses it. So she had she had this idea that, um, people have insecurities, and there are different personality types that deal with their their in the ccurities and with the expansive personality type, there were three sub types that dealt with their insecurities,

and one of those was the narcissist. So narcissism was one way that some people deal with their insecurities, according to her, So she um, she kind of I guess her big contribution to it was too to point out

that narcissism is a defense mechanism. That that was, which is a pretty significant breakthrough actually when you know, it went from it's people who masturbate too much to actually it's mostly guys and no, it's it's just a development stage, to wait a minute, wait a minute, this is a this is a this is how some people reflexively deal with the fact that they don't feel like they measure up deep down inside, which is kind of mind blowing thing to do, especially if you're not aware of it.

Like it's not like something happens to you when you're a kid and you go, you know what, when I grow up, I'm gonna remember all this. But the way I'm going to deal with it is to be totally arrogant and pretend like I think that I'm the greatest thing that ever happened. You just watch now. I'm gonna

wait twelve fifteen years and let the clock start taking now. Yeah, So that was late nineteen thirties, and then um, the next big breakthrough came in nineteen sixty with Annie Reich, who was Phil Helms wife, has just pointed out parenthetically, actually that one's sort of legit, although he could have just used comments. Sure, you know, all these parentheses are

driving nuts. But this was a big breakthrough because she says, you know what, not only are people UM very vulnerable who are narcissists, but I think it comes that vulnerability might come from traumatic experience that they suffered when they were younger. Yeah, and the original source that's still like kind of a thought about things, not necessarily a trauma, but a lot of UM psychologists point to parents as as potentially the source for it, which we'll talk more

about later. Yeah. And she also had the idea that UM narcissist there is no sort of middle ground. They can't suffer ambiguity. And it's basically I'm either totally successful or I'm a big failure, right, which means that they can't they can't handle criticism, which is a huge hallmark of the narcissistic personality disorder. Right. So there's another guy who didn't make it in this article but made a

huge contribution. Actually two of them. One was Henry Murray, and back in he noticed that there was something that he termed a covert narcissist. Where most most people, when you think of a narcissist, you think overt narcissists, like people who are just completely, obviously publicly in love with themselves. But Henry Murray said, no, there's another type I've noticed.

I'm gonna call him covert narcissists. And and they share in common with overt narcissists this um conceit and arrogance, and they value their own needs other other over other people's needs. So at their core they are narcissistic, but the way that their narcissism plays out publicly is basically the opposite of a of an overt narcissist. Rather than being brash and self assured and confident and cocky, they're

actually quiet. They're introverted. All of their psychodrama plays out inside and they become anxious, they're very vulnerable, they get very defensive and then back and then later on in the nineties again named Paul Wink reclassified covert and over

into grandiosity, exhibitionism, and then vulnerability sensitivity. And the vulnerability sensitivity type of narcissists is basically, um, they're entitled, they feel entitled, but they're also like very bitter, right, Yeah, it's a lot of anxiety, bitterness, Uh, defensive, Um, like you said before, introverted. And then one of the keys here I think is delusions of persecution and which can also be tied into paranoia. So everyone's out to get me,

They're coming after me. Why is it always me? That kind of thinking? So it's like constant, complete absorption in the self. But rather than absorption in thinking about how awesome you are, you're thinking about how everything like the world's against you. But it's ultimately the two things that they should that the type share in common is that it all boils down to them. It's always about them

one way or another. Yeah, for sure. Um, And that that was like incredibly insightful I think when you sent that one over. Thank you, Thank you, buddy, I found that. I found that article you did. Yeah. Uh. And then finally, finally in nineteen sixty eight, well actually uh, in six one, a man named John Ne Maya finally coined the term narcissistic character disorder, and then finally in Night Heinz cohort

Um described it as narcissistic personality disorder. And then it would be another twelve years before we finally make it into the d s M as an actual diagnosed diagnostic description. Right, I think that yeah edition the d s M three, Right, yeah, okay, and chuck at this man. We are like twenty seven minutes into this episode. We're about to take our first ad break. That's a new record. Yeah, so we'll we'll be right back. We're gonna talk about me while you

guys listen to these ads. But you can think about me as s k okay man, So you said that it finally made it into the d s M in and it is a specified personality disorder one of I don't remember how many there are, but um in the d s M this last go round, which was two

thousand and eleven, I think for the d s M five. Um, do you remember how the Press that got when they when they were putting the d s M with the actual UM term for his Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the American Psychological Association's Bible basically right where every psychologist and psychiatrists in all the land has this thing, and they're going through this saying, oh, this person has this, this, and this, so they actually qualify for this, so I

can build insurance for this and and prescribe medication for this, and it's all legit like they this is what the d s M does. It's the bible for psychologists. And one of the there's a huge struggle UM in about two thousand and ten two thousan and eleven between people who said, Dude, these personality disorders are too they're too strict. You you either have it or you don't. And people, especially in terms of personality, just don't exist like that.

We exist on spectrums. There's different dimensions, and we've talked about it before, I think in the Personality Inventory episode. But the viewpoint that enjoys the widest appreciation these days in the psychology community is the Big five traits, the ocean or canoe traits like openness or um, openness to new experiences or extra version, these kind of things. And and when you take these different personality traits, you get

a clearer picture of people. And you can also take those traits and basically apply them to dysfunction of personality, and you can say, well, you've got these dysfunctions and we need to work on this, rather than you've got these five dysfunctions, which means you automatically qualify for narcissistic personalities order. So narcissistic personality disorder and narcissism almost didn't

make it into the d s M five. But the people who were struggling for the big five traits to take over lost the battle, and and it stayed the same, just the way it's been since night. And we'll we'll talk about it more later. But there's a lot of um questions about whether it's legitimate. But the criteria, if you'll allow me, chuck, like the d s M S criteria for narcissistic personality disorder are these You would have to have a grandiose sense of self importance. It's pretty straightforward.

You're preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love. What else you got that? Yes? Uh. Number three believes that he or she is special and unique and can only be understood by or should associate with other special people. Yeah right Um. This kind of like narcissists spurring all the hosers right right. Um. You require excessive admiration, right um, which means that you, uh, you want compliments, You fish for compliments, and flattery really

gets you places with a narcissist too. Yeah, you have a high sense of entitlement. Um, you're interpersonally exploitive. This is a big one. Number seven. You lack empathy either you're not able to or you uh or you're not willing to write. Um. And then you're often envious of others or you think that other people are envious of you. Again, this all kind of reverts back to you thinking about how it's always about you, and that other people are

walking around thinking about you at any given point in time. Uh. And then finally, uh, well you're arrogant and you're kind of a jerk, right and there you go. You put it together, and that's the that's the narcissist. And I think maybe five of nine qualify for a definitive narcissistic personality disorder UM diagnosis. Yeah, and the and what makes a person a narcissist is sort of a conundrum at

this point. It's one of those things where and this article kind of points it out in a good way where nature and nurture are so mixed up, um, that we don't really know what where what can make someone a narcissist? Um. Certainly, probably or almost assuredly, it's a

little bit of both, um, probably, like most things. But um, you could have parents that are and especially nowadays, I know with parenting is is like your child is the the unique snowflake, and you're the most special person on the planet, and you were the most perfect little angel. Kind of feeding a child that as they grow up, um, which is a more recent parenting technique. Yes, get this man. I read an article called how the self esteem Craze took over America. Yeah, um, I posted it, you know

on my website are you serious Clark dot com? Um that I do reading lists, which is just like cool articles that I've read and it's on there. But they they traced us back to one book that came out called The Lovables in the Kingdom of Self Esteem a children's book, and they they said that like this was the sources thing took off and ended up in like basically classroom curriculum, and it raised this whole generation to have um more self esteem than any other generation has

been raised on before. Yeah, not to knock self esteem though, I think I think though there is a general thought among some people that it has crossed the line between self esteem and entitlement. Yeah, there you go, so, I mean, and that is a huge debate because a lot of people on the other side say, actually, you're just being a crotchety old person who's aging and losing touch with what you know the world is doing these days. Um, yeah, I think that's that's just fascinating me. But we'll talk

more about that later. But the parents are widely implicated right as as possibly the source of this. Yeah. Like Gene Twinge, she's one of the champions of um of narcissism. She co wrote a book with another researcher from the University of Georgia named W. Keith Campbell, and it was called The Narcissism Epidemic, which became more than just a book title. It was basically a term that made the rounds from two thousand and eight to even today. You

can find it. Uh. It seems to have hit the high water mark back around two thousand and ten, eleven, twelve, maybe UM, but they they created this avalanche of discussion and press and talk and gene twine. One of the one of her hallmarks is to find support for her theory outside of the lab and more in pop culture. So one of the ways that she's she suggested that her theory is right, that narcissism is indeed on the rise among millennials, is that UM children are given much

less common names than they were before. Yeah. I thought that was interesting. Um, that whole thing where you name your kid, uh apple Martini, and you're you're the only one in the world named Apple Martini. There's an Appletini in my class, but I'm Apple Martini, right. Uh, that is what a special, um, special little child. You are right, there shall be no other Apple Martini. Yeah. I think the stat they came up with was that in UM, the eighteen eightiest of boys received one of the ten

most common names. Today fewer than ten percent too. Yeah, I mean I thought that was a little hanky to say. Well, in the eighteen eighties, everyone was named Jack and John and William. Right. It's just completely it's just that's anecdotal evidence. It's basically that's trivia. That's not science. That's a trivia,

is what it is. And that's part of the problem with all the so the idea that you can label an entire generation as narcissist by saying narcissism is on the rise, and then that in turn explains selfies and Facebook to the older people that it's actually a deficiency that these kids have. It's not me getting older, it's

the kids. And now it's being proven by science. That's created this whole huge national conversation that's definitely taken narcissism very very far out of um, out of the research realm, and into just complete armchair pop psychology. Well here's some more pop psychology for you from me, because I see, well, I don't know, I'm not gonna make any judgment on today's millennials and how narcissistic they are, but I think that's that's fair. But I have seen narcissism, rampant narcissism

in our parents generation. Oh yeah, yeah, the whole um what what general what was that generation. M I guess baby Boomers. Yeah, that's right, the Baby Boomers. They were just special in every single way, shape or form. Remember, Yeah, but that's the thing, like, uh I have I have seen it firsthand, um with with that generation where but it's it's not like, oh I'm into selfies and stuff like that, like it manifests itself in a completely different way.

Or I'll uh, I'll get on the phone with my kid and talk for forty five minutes about myself without once ever asking how they're doing. You know, So so we should say here, yeah, this is the we're doing the same thing to that older generation though that they're doing to younger generations too, right you know. So maybe the point is narcissism isn't on the rise or on the decline at all. It's just always been there for a certain amount of people. Well there is a yes, Yes,

there's a lot of evidence that that is absolutely true, Chuck. Like, for example, there's there was a really large study like thirty seven thousands something people, which were apparently a pretty good representation of American adults. Right, so it's a it's a good study population, and they asked them to self report the instances of narcissism that they've had throughout their life.

And they basically scored whether these people had experienced any basically bouts of narcissistic personality disorder or some sort of clinical narcissism, right, And they found that the younger you were, the more prone you were to have reported being narcissistic. And so a lot of people point to that and say, see, it's on the rise with the younger generation. The older generation wasn't like that, And the other people who are

critics of that say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. When you get older, one of the hallmarks of getting older is completely forgetting all the stuff you went through to get to that point in your life. Yeah, or how you are currently, right, that's another way to put it, too. So, um, there's a there's a big problem with the idea of just having people self report whether they were narcissistic back in their lives. But people who do say, okay, even

if that was legitimate, they're they're forgetting. People are forgetting that everybody goes through a narcissistic phase in their life. And then yes, if you if you go younger and you start asking people about it while they're in their narcissistic phase. They're going to be more likely to report it than people who have forgotten because their narcissistic phase

was decades ago. Right, um or the notion, and we'll get into the treatment a little bit more with with seeing a psychologist or a therapist, but one of the hallmarks of a narcissist is to go to a therapist for a little while, maybe for depression or something else which can be co morbid, and they dig down and get to the root of it and they're like, actually, you're a narcissist, and that's where all this stuff is coming from. And that's when the narcissist goes, this is nuts.

I'm out of here, Like I'm not going to continue my therapy. You don't know what you're talking about, right, which is a huge problem apparent if you are a narcissist and you do, you are one of the very very few that end up in therapy. Um, you're there for some other reason. You're not like, oh, I'm a narcissist, I need help. It's what's this weird anxiety I've got dealing with all the time? Or why am I depressed? Or you know why am I flying off the handle

at work? And HR sent me here? You know? Um? And so they will get to therapy, but even the ones that do get there apparently tend to wash out pretty quickly because part and parcel with with therapy is accepting criticism or other perspectives that you you may have some things to work on. And once you start hitting that that segment of therapy, the narcissist is probably going to say, you're an idiot and I'm out of here.

I can't be associating with you. You went to Yale, not Harvard, right, And and like you said, surprising, Uh, it's surprising if they're in there to begin with, because part of being a narcissist is, on one hand, or at least in one kind of narcissist, is I got no problems. Why do I need to go to a therapist? Everything is great. I don't give a grap what anyone thinks about me. It's all good, bro. Right, So there's

just some inherent problems with treating narcissism. I read a really interesting article in the Harvard Business Review, and it was basically advice to mentors about how to mentor a narcissist, and it did a really good job of explaining like some of the problems that you will have at work being a narcissist. Like on the one hand, and apparently studies have found that narcissists tend to congregate or aggregate towards the top of the food chain or the bottom

of the food chain in corporate organizations, which is interesting. Yeah, And I would guess that would mostly be whether it was covert or overt narcissists, I'm not sure, but um, in a lot of ways, being a narcissist, your your your personality traits can be valued or prized at a company. You know, if you're in sales and you have limitless confidence and if you get if you don't make a sale is because that guy was an idiot, not because

you know you didn't do a very good job. So you're just right onto the next guy to to sell to the next person. Like that's that's that's highly valuable. Right. But eventually somebody's going to criticize you a cowork or something like that. It's gonna hit you the wrong way. You're not gonna take it very well because you're gonna know that they're right, But your response to that kind of thing is not to go chew it over process whether you actually agree with it, whether they're right or not.

And then if you decide that they are to to take that as advice and become a better person from it, that's not your m as as a person with narcissistic personality. This or you're gonna bite the other person's head off, you're gonna create a conflict at work that probably has to be smoothed over by multiple parties, or maybe you'll end up fired or demoted or who knows. So. Um, it can go both ways, and it usually goes both ways. Within a career or a job for a person with

clinical narcissism. Yeah, like you, to put it mildly, you you're lacking an interpersonal skills fort sure. Uh So, as far as the science behind it, there's um like the hard science, there's not a ton, but they did. Uh this one study I thought was pretty interesting. Um is they looked at people in the old m R I machine in Berlin, and they at least people that they thought had narcissistic personality disorder, and they found that the

cerebral cortex of these people were significantly thinner than normal. Uh, and that's where we foster empathy. So there definitely could be something to that. Uh. And then that other study I thought was interesting was um, and this is kind of along the lines of treatment, was they sat people down narcissist and showed them videos of what was the videos of of just things going wrong with people said, documentaries? Yea sad documentaries. So my brother's keepers what they watched?

Oh really? Okay, oh man, what's that one documentary The saddest thing I've ever seen? Great Gardens, Thin Blue Line, Vernon, Florida. No, you're just naming documentaries now, Oh, I can't remember. It was the one about the It was the one about a murderer. It was just devastating. Remember, oh, Dear Zachary, God man, holy cow, that was. I could barely get through that thing. Yeah. Yeah, it was as bad as it gets because it was real. Yeah, so, which most

documentaries are. So they showed Dear Zachary two people to narcissists, and they measure their heart rate and apparently the empathetic response, your heart rate will go up, and they were just flatlined, well not flatlined, because but they were they were just

at their normal heart rate going and uh. Then they showed them, Uh, I don't know if it's the same one, but they showed them another documentary where they just coached them and said, hey, what if this were you put yourself in their shoes, and all of a sudden they they it changed and their heart rate increased. So the question was like, is it that easy? Is merely suggesting to a narcissist? Hey, why don't you think of it from another point of view? Like, so the question is

are they unable or unwilling to do so? Well? I think that's the case with anyone who lacks empathy, Like even in their psychopath episode, we talked about the potential ability for psychopaths to empathize. They just have to be told you should empathize now, and then you know, like it's just not an automatic thing for people who lack empathy. I think fake the empathy though, that's the difference, didn't it?

I don't remember. I think they were able to rationalize why they would be able to rationalize the outcome of empathy, like, oh, that person wouldn't want that to happen to them. I should probably stop rooting on the bad thing, right, um this, I guess this is a little different than that, Like, oh, okay, I'll turn on my empathy now, yeah, you're right. Should we take a break? Yeah, all right, Well let's take a break and uh, well we'll talk a little bit

more about narcissism after this, as what skuf you should know. Okay, we're back chucking. As you promised, we're gonna talk a little more about narcissism. Uh. There was this one, um thing I thought was fairly interesting in our own article where we talked about evolutionary psychology. They did a two thousand four study with modeling techniques computer modeling where they looked at facial whether or not couples look like each other when they hook up. So that conan O'Brien segment.

What I don't remember two celebrities and putting together was rotten looking the kids, God, that was the best if they made it, or something like that. Um. So, what they did found was that they saw a correlation at least what they called a sort of mating assortative mating where basically you seek those who look like you, uh,

which I thought was fairly interesting. And they thought that could tie in a little bit with narcissism like like like maybe it has a biological basis, Yeah, exactly, And that would actually tie into the idea that we hit our narcissistic peak during our like um reproductive years and then it wanes as we age an age out of reproductativeness. Right, so maybe it is kind of correlated to it. And then if you if your synapse is just fuse a little too much, you can become m narcissistic to a

clinical degree. Who knows, no one, No one knows. That's the point. So that's that's the problem with this field of research is no one knows. But people are diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder every day. Nobody can agree on the prevalence this. Our article says seven point seven percent of men in the US four point eight percent of women. That washes out to six point two percent average among

the genders. I saw one percent. UM. I also saw two hundred thousand, which is way less than one percent in the US. UM. No one has any idea what the prevalence is and they're not sure why. There's a couple of proposals for why. One is that UM. The the narcissistic personality disorder criteria that we went over places a lot of emphasis on that that over type of

narcissist and undervalues the over there, the covert type. Right, And so it's possible that there are way more narcissists out there than than would be caught by the NPD criteria and the d S M right. Yeah, it's just so tough with personality disorders that to me clearly exists on a spectrum to kind of pin down anything, you know, like they have this, uh, they have the online test you can take. I took it myself because I was curious. I scored. I scored an eleven out of forty. Oh

that's not very narcissistic. No, I was a little disappointed. I was hoping to be in the single digits. I did not take the test. Oh yeah, I imagine you were thinking about me when you took it, so I just left it at that. Do you think I was talking about you because I'm a narcissist now that you were thinking about me while you were taking the test. No, I didn't think about Yeah, I was answering for myself. And eleven out of forty I thought was I can't remember?

I mean it broke it down. It showed averages and stuff like that. Uh, and then it showed you where you were more likely or where you're subtraits. Uh, like out of those eleven, like let's say seven of those out of the eleven was a specific subtrait. UM. So that was sort of helpful. But I just looked at it. I was like, oh, well, maybe I should work on that stuff. Right, get get down into the single digits. Yeah, you're gonna try to get your test score down. Check

it out, man, keep me posted, will you? Personal growth? Um, there's a there's another inventory you can take. I'm trying to find the name of it. Um. Which is it kind of gets the covert type out in the open. Yeah, it's called the um Maladaptive Covert Narcissism Scale. Uh So there were forty questions on the mp D Personality Inventory.

Uh yeah. Um, this one's like twenty three and you give it a score between one and five, whereas with the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, it's like a you choose between basically opposite pairs of statements, right, Yeah, I mean it was a quite opposite. Sometimes they're a little trickier, and there were some they repeated in different ways, or I'm like, I see what you're doing there, right, You can't can't

use psychology on me. Yeah, but it was also, uh, when I see things like this, I think, if you're taking this and you know what it is, and you are a narcissist, you were probably not gonna be very honest either. That part of being the narcissist is like I'm not I'm not going to admit that. Oh yeah, if it's a defense mechanism, you you wouldn't really be capable of it, you know. Yeah, I thought it was interesting.

It would crumble your ego, that's right. Um. One of the reasons why all of this is up for debate still and why we're having so much fun with it this afternoon, is because there's been no definitive study that really looks at a true representative sample of say, teenagers in America to determine a baseline to compare today's teams

up against. Right, there have been studies, so they're the college kids all around the US have been given for years and years and years now the narcissistic personality inventory,

and they're usually psychology students. UM. So that's usually a select group from an already select group from the population, which is college students, so you're not really looking at it a representative sample of all teens in America at the time, but from that select group of select group, they've found that personality among some different colleges, personality narcissistic personality traits apparently has risen by about two questions from

the late eighties till the mid two thousand's, And then other people are like, no, no, no, that's all wrong. First of all, you guys are you're comparing tests from different colleges and different eras. That's terrible. What we need is somebody to get together all of the teenagers in America were a huge representative sample of them. Say just give it out to all high schools in the United States to take on one day and start that. Do it now, and then start using that as your baseline

for twenty thirty years out. Then we can actually say whether narcissism is increasing. Right, And the closest thing they've got is that thing that they've been giving to high school kids since the seventies. Um, it's great, it has like this has the best. Um, the more you know type name it's called monitoring the future. I love it. That sounds like such a great US government test for high school students, But it's from the National Institute on

Drug Abuse and UM. Apparently it's an annual survey of fifty thousand high school students and it doesn't directly measure narcissism, but it measures parts of a personality personality dimensions related to it, right, like self esteem, egoism, individualism. And what they found is that, um, self esteem, well, actually all of those factors are basically exactly the same in two

thousands six as they were in nineteen. Interesting, So apparently that would that would undermine the idea that narcissism is on the rise. But if somebody tells you narcissism is on the rise, next time they say that, you say,

how do you know? Tell him, Josh, there you go, Uh well, yeah, I mean there are people that say, like it's an epidemic and other because of social media mainly and selfies and Instagram, and I just I don't know, man, I don't I think that's something when um, like I've seen people, uh, I've witnessed people taking selfies like like a dozen of them trying to get it just right,

and making the face out and doing all that. Yeah, it's not pretty to see, it's not And I see that, and I think, is that narcissism or is that just um, I don't know. To me, it's it's it's a it's a personality trait that any and all of us have, and under the right circumstances, it can be brought out easier for some than others. But our society has changed enough so that it is far more socially acceptable and even socially encouraged through social media to do those kind

of things. Right. Yeah, I don't think that that necessarily translates automatically to arise in narcissism. I think it's just a change in society. Like some people are, like those people have always been around, they're just more visible because they're doing it at the public pool now or in the bar, Whereas in the fifties they would have been laughed out of that bar or out of that pool had they done that, But they were still around. It

just wasn't socially acceptable for them to do stuff like that. Yeah, And I guess I think I'm having a hard time but into words, but I think I think that that true narcissism is a lot deeper than that, and that can just be like, Hey, I think I'm really hot and I like to take pictures of myself, but but maybe I'm also very empathetic and have great interpersonal skills and I see other people's point of view a lot,

but I'm super stuck up. Like I don't think just because you take a lot of selfies or you're obsessed with social media means you're narcissistic. I think it goes way Narcissism goes way deeper than that, and it's like a a tunnel vision where you are only seeing things from your own point of view. I mean that's part

of it. And then I think the other part of it too is yeah, maybe millennials are UM do have over inflated self esteem, or maybe they're this wonderful generation that's actually really dedicated to changing the world for a positive view. The problem is um when you start to paint the whole generation with a single brush, and that's that's been done with narcissism, which I think really undermines

the value of the term. So there's plenty more to talk about if you want to learn more about narcissism. You can just dive into the Internet and find out what your local um blogger thinks about it, because they guarantee you they've written about it. Uh. And since I said that it's time for a listener mail, I'm gonna call this one uh sad horny bunnies. This all makes sense in a second. I have no idea what this one.

During the recent flu show, Guys You explained that it was Iowa doc Richard Schope who first isolated the flu virus. That was likely the achievement that made him famous, but not the reason why my family knows of his work. We live in the Twin Cities. Shout out to the Twin Cities, where we've seen many rabbits with a horrifying disease. It causes them to grow what appeared to be horns, sometimes just one or two, occasionally half a dozen or more.

And though the gross are often right where an animal would have horns, sometimes they sprout from near rabbit's mouth or eyes, making survival pretty challenging. A few years ago, when we investigated this creepy rabbit illness, we learned it was Richard Chope who first isolated and identified the virus that causes it, now called the Chope uh Papaloma virus SPV, is similar to some papaloma viruses and humans, which can lead to fund things like genital warts or cervical cancer.

In fact, thanks to the work of Shope, other researchers, and these spooky looking rabbits, we have medical successes like the HPV vaccine. Uh. It is not critical to my life this information, but it certainly makes it more interesting. And that's why I'm always listening to stuff you should know. And that is from Jane uh Niemeyer in the Twin Cities Nice and did you look it up? It did. And if you want to see heartbreaking photos bunnies with horns coming out of their face, just look up show

Papaloma virus rabbits. And it is so sad because there's nothing cute or a planet almost at a bunny rabbit and you see these things. He's like, man, what did you do to deserve that's the worst? Well, thanks a lot. What was the name of the author, Jane, Jane, Thanks a lot, Jane, appreciate that. Thanks for bringing us down. If you want to bring us down like Jane, did you could tweet to us at s y s K

podcast through josh em Clark. You can hang out with this on Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know or slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant. You can send us an email stuff podcast to how Stuff Works dot com and as always, joined us at our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics. Is that how stuff workstof come