A common belief about narcissists is that a person with high narcissistic traits is locked into a fixed, unchanging pattern that persists throughout their lives. You may be close to someone you consider to have narcissistic traits, either through a close relationship, at work, or among your circle of friends.
You think this person has all the narcissistic traits, from lack of empathy to grandiosity. Perhaps this person is a young person who has recently become your relative. It irritates you that family gatherings are now affected by the way this person monopolizes the conversation and demands unusual attention.
Will this be the fate of all future gatherings? According to a new study by Unik Witzel of the University of Mannheim/University of Vienna and her colleagues in the United States, there may be reason for optimism, even about this annoying relative. Referring to complaints that “today’s youth” are more narcissistic than those of previous generations, Witzel and others suggest that it is youth that is associated with narcissism in general, making today’s twenties no different from those of past decades. The authors suggest that with age comes an increased ability to turn the spotlight off yourself and pay more attention to the needs of others.
Previous studies by the authors and their colleagues have supported the claim that narcissism is no more prevalent among young people today than in previous generations. However, no one has actually tracked the trajectory of narcissism over the years from youth to mid-adulthood in the same people. Previous studies have compared narcissism scores for different groups, but they have not tracked individuals over time to see what happens to their scores as they grow into mid-adulthood. This time, the international researchers tracked the same people over the key years from 18 to 41. Comparing their scores across this 23-year period would make it possible to address not only the idea that young people today are no more narcissistic than those in the past, but also that young people become less narcissistic over time.
Recognizing that personality development does not occur in a vacuum, Wetzel and her co-authors also examined the ways in which people’s narcissism changed depending on where they started their adult lives. They may start out in jobs that suit their personality, such as an extrovert who goes into marketing. Once they get into these jobs, they are also influenced by the working conditions. Similarly, when it comes to relationships, people choose partners based at least in part on personality compatibility. Once in a relationship, each person is influenced by the other’s personality. When it comes to starting a family, all other things being equal, personality also influences the life choices people make, which in turn will influence personality development.
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With this conceptual background in mind, the authors added significant life events to their analysis of changes in narcissism over the course of early adulthood. In other words, do people change based on their early life choices? The data came from a longitudinal study that began at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1992. The original sample was then followed until a follow-up in 2013–2016. The authors measured narcissism at the start and end points of the study, making it possible to compare the 23-year follow-up. At the start of the study, 519 students (more than half of whom were female) completed the Narcissism Inventory, and by the 23-year follow-up, the authors had usable data from 237 graduates on the same scale. The 32-item Narcissism Inventory was divided into three scales: vanity (“I like to look at myself in the mirror”), leadership (“People always seem to recognize my authority”), and entitlement (“I will never be satisfied until I get everything I deserve”). To measure life events, Weitzel et al. asked participants to indicate which of 17 life events had happened to them (getting married, starting a new job, experiencing a serious illness or injury). For the events they experienced, participants also rated their impact on a scale from “very positive” to “very negative.”
Take a moment now to think about which of your life events would rank at the top of your personal history, and how you would rate your experience of those events. It’s very likely that if you were somewhere after early adulthood, you would have started a new job and would also likely have made some type of career change. If so, what impact did it have on you? More important, from the researchers’ perspective, was the nature of that career change? Was it a promotion or a demotion?
To get a sense of the specific nature of the job-related events, the authors also rated the participants’ job titles at age 41 in terms of status, salary, and supervisory responsibilities. Participants also rated their level of satisfaction. The jobs themselves were also rated in terms of personality traits such as “traditional” (e.g. accountant) and “social” (e.g. teacher). Now think about the type of job you have and whether you think it generally matches your personality. Are you satisfied with your job?
In the relationship domain, participants also rated their satisfaction, as well as the number of children they had and the length of their marriage (if applicable). Again, think about your own relationship status: Do you agree with one of the items the researchers used that “my relationship is close to perfect”?
Finally, participants provided health-related data, including their self-rated health, frequency of hospital visits, body mass index, and overall sense of life satisfaction and well-being.
As you can see, this was a comprehensive look at the study participants’ lives, providing an in-depth profile of them as they entered their 40s. Overall, going back to the original question, there was a significant decline in narcissism scores over time, particularly on the entitlement dimension. It’s clear, from this finding alone, that as the authors predicted, narcissism peaks in early adulthood. As people move from their 20s to their 30s, in other words, they learn that the world isn’t really there to serve them.
The next piece of the narcissism puzzle concerns the relationship between life events and personality change. As you might expect, people who rose to supervisory positions began their adult journeys at a higher level of narcissism, and once they took the fate of others into their own hands, they remained at a higher level of leadership than narcissism.
Perhaps equally surprisingly, those who were high in vanity had fewer children and were more likely to divorce by their 40s. Conversely, and perhaps not surprisingly to anyone with a parent, the biggest declines in vanity occurred in people who were in intimate relationships and those who had children. Clearly, even vanity narcissists can become somewhat more humble in response to the demands of raising children.
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Vanity had its positive aspects: Those who were high in vanity in college went on to enjoy better health than their peers at a less appearance-focused age. And over time, while their relationships may have suffered, the forever vain ones did not. As the authors put it, “Perceptions of failure may lead people to focus on those aspects of themselves that can be acted upon. After each setback, people may expend energy on their physical appearance in an attempt to achieve a positive outcome in areas such as relationships and health.”
Returning to the case of your young narcissistic relative, Wetzel and others’ findings do suggest that over time, this person may be able to adapt to the rhythms of your family’s ways of interacting. Your in-laws’ narcissism may even melt away if children come into the picture or a job change brings this person back to a more realistic self-evaluation.
In short, it’s easy to think of narcissists as living in a perpetual state of self-importance. This study of Berkeley graduates shows that this is likely to change as they adjust to the changing circumstances that are part of adult life.
