Main Area and Open Discussion > Living Room

We are raising a generation of deluded narcissists

<< < (2/3) > >>

Renegade:
Blaming the internet, games, even politics (fox news ;D), that article seems to have totally forgotten to mention the parents.-Jibz (January 14, 2013, 03:35 AM)
--- End quote ---
Wat, do parents have anything to do with the personalities their hellspawn end up with? Jibz, you're shocking me!

-f0dder (January 14, 2013, 06:28 AM)
--- End quote ---

<sarcasm>How could the parents possibly be to blame?</sarcasm> <truth>Usually they aren't there anymore</truth> as <inconvenient_truth>they're busy working to get out of debt.</inconvenient_truth>
 

TaoPhoenix:
What if the students deemed as deluded narcissists are being judged by the deluded narcissists of the previous generation which is why it's only reporting it as a 30% increase?
-Paul Keith (January 13, 2013, 09:38 PM)
--- End quote ---

Or, being judged by folk who dislike/hate [perceived] narcissists?

I'm always a bit - often a large bit - suspicious of such studies, since I seldom know the true qualifications of those who make/made the study.
-barney (January 13, 2013, 10:21 PM)
--- End quote ---

Or something. Seeing that it is from Fox, I understood why the editorial's overall assembly began to gnaw at me. Let's dig around in it a little. In many ways this is in my opinion a bad use of science to further an agenda.

1. "Dr. Keith Ablow is a psychiatrist." per the byline. But the author of *both papers* (there's two of them going on here, did y'all miss it?) is *"only"* a psychologist, and let's make sure we don't mention her academic title! Nothing like a little degree bashing before the article even gets going! Yes, it does appear she has a doctorate as well. Meanwhile, let's comment on papers without even giving the source citations! After all, if you make readers do unnecessary hard work to find them, it becomes much more fun to sit back and soak in the nice doctor's editorial.

2. Here's a related paper, though it looks like not a match for either of the two:
http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/psp-102-5-1045.pdf
But it does give us clues about what the other papers might be: In abbreviated-citation form, we get:

"Many previous studies have examined generational differences in
personality traits and positive self-views (e.g., Andre´ et al., 2010;
Gentile, Twenge, & Campbell, 2010; Stewart & Bernhardt, 2010;
Twenge, Campbell, & Gentile, 2011)."

That leads me to the citations section of the paper.
Twenge, J. M., Campbell, W. K., & Gentile, B. (2011). Generational
increases in agentic self-evaluations among American college students,
1966–2009. Self and Identity. Advance online publication. doi:10.1080/
15298868.2011.576820

3. Got it. Here's part of the abstract, which sounds pretty sure like it's a match:
Compared to previous generations, more American college students now rate themselves as above average on attributes such as academic ability, drive to achieve, leadership ability, public speaking ability, self-confidence, and writing ability (based on a nationally representative sample collected 1966–2009; N = 6.5 million). These birth cohort differences are similar with controls for race and gender and occurred despite the college population becoming less selective. Trends in positive self-views are correlated with grade inflation (which increased d = 0.81), but are not explained by changes in objective performance (e.g., SAT scores have declined, d = −0.22) or effort (time spent studying is down, d = − 0.31).

Journal of Self and Identity
Volume 11, Issue 4, 2012
It seems to be behind a paywall, but many people can go to a library if they really cared. But wouldn't it have been nice if for once reporters could bother to say where mysterious "studies" are?   >:(  Meanwhile, I'm out of energy to track down the second article based on a 1 sentence conclusion. Overall, Ms. Twenge has been studying this stuff for a long time.

Paul Keith:
They do that. (Not Fox)

The downside is that we're so mob-like that when a site does it, it's not praised but rather demonized.

I remember one Rt.com article doing just that and the reaction went like: "Hurr durr, the reporter should read the actual pdf cause it says this and that. Hurr durr, reporters don't read the reports."

It wasn't that the actual reporter was not sensationalizing but the differences was so minute that I wondered why people were so enthralled with it and yet not one praised a news article as finally direct linking to a study.

MSMs know this sleight of hand hurts their brand so they purposefully do not do it. They understand it does not only indoctrinate their reader base but it provides extra incentives for guests to come to their channel to clear something up and if they don't come, it's small news. If it hits big like a Ron Paul, you let Bill O'Reilly call out why said guy is not coming to the show to defend himself while throwing pot shots whenever there's an opportunity to editorialize the person.

They even know when to time it right and add a mini-link or a blog-link to train their readers not to click or think beyond links but present an example where this time they actually linked to something. Fox is not even ahead of the train in that aspect when it comes to written news. The liberal MSMs tend to be more voracious at playing the trick, Fox just does this obvious stuff. Gets another internet poster gets mad, repeats the same actions, get the same anger and then it just builds up their visits. I did not click on that link for example knowing that I would get the predictable Fox slant but when you posted the reply above, despite this not being the first time I've read a similar complaint and a similar attempt, I still clicked on the link without even reading it. Just click, look to see if there are blue clickables and then close tab.

Tinman57:
  Another excellent example of narcissism, American Idle.  How many of the thousands upon thousands of people that they judged that not only could not carry a tune (totally tone deaf), but sounded something like a cat caught in a blender?  But yet these same people argued with the judges, telling them that they were in fact very talented and could make it anywhere.  Before they left the stage they would either yell obscenities at the judges or tell them something like "Just wait and see, you'll be sorry when I make the big time on my own."  My god, even a 1st grader could tell they sounded horrible, but yet these people think that they are "The Shit".

  Anyhow, I figured this subject would bring out a few comments.....   :P

barney:
these people think that they are "The Shit".
-Tinman57 (January 14, 2013, 06:07 PM)
--- End quote ---

Well, it all truth they are ... just, perhaps, not the way they'd have us thimk  :P.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page