Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck
Treating your child like they’re the greatest thing since sliced bread and they’ll most likely believe you, becoming self-centered little narcissists in the process, according to a new study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
In the study, Ohio State University professor Brad Bushman, University of Amsterdam postdoc Eddie Brummelman and their colleagues set out to find the origins of narcissism. They surveyed parents and children four times over a span of 18 months to see if they could pinpoint the factors that caused youngsters to have an overinflated concept of their own self worth.
They found that moms and dads who tended to “overvalue” their children at the start of the study wound up with sons and daughters who scored higher on tests of narcissism later on. Youngsters considered to be overvalued were described by their parents as being “more special” than other kids and deserving of “something extra in life,” the researchers explained in a statement.
[STORY: Men are more narcissistic than women]
“Children believe it when their parents tell them that they are more special than others. That may not be good for them or for society,” said Bushman, communication and psychology professor at OSU and co-author of the study. Even if parents have the best intentions, “overvaluing practices may inadvertently raise levels of narcissism” rather than self-esteem, he added.
The difference between self-eseteem and narcissism
The study, which the authors claim is the first of its kind to investigate how narcissism develops over time, involved 565 children from the Netherlands who were between the ages of seven and 11 when the study began, and their parents. Parents were instructed to fill out surveys asking how much they agreed or disagreed with a series of statements, including “my child is a great example for other children to follow” and “I let my child know I love him/her.”
Contrary to the common believe that narcissism is the result of high levels of self-esteem, the researchers said that the two are different. For instance, rather than seeing themselves as more special than other youngsters, kids with high self-esteem agreed with statements indicating that they were happy with themselves and liked the kind of person that they were.
[STORY: Does posting selfies make you a psychopath?]
Bushman and Brummelman also reported that self-esteem and narcissism develop in different ways. While parents who overvalued their kids were more likely to have narcissistic children in time, there was no link between overvaluation and self-esteem. Rather, parents who were more emotionally warm tended to have kids with more self-esteem, but who were not narcissitic.
“Overvaluation predicted narcissism, not self-esteem, whereas warmth predicted self-esteem, not narcissism,” Bushman said. The link remained even after he and his co-authors accounted for the narcissism levels of the parents, meaning that the trait is not necessarily passed down.
Nature versus nurture, Lodge
The new study reveals that the social learning theory of narcissism, the notion that kids become narcissistic when they are overvalued by their parents and treated as more deserving than others, is predominantly responsible for instilling such beliefs, Forbes explained. However, the website also pointed out that previous research has also found that genetics are partially responsible.
Brummelman admitted to Forbes that “research suggests that, indeed, the role of genes and the environment are evenly split,” which is both good and bad news. Parents can help a child with a genetic predisposition to narcissism by not artificially inflating his or her ego, making sure that they have a more low-key, reserved approach to doling out praise for various achievements.
Bushman, a father of three himself, told the website that the findings have “changed my parenting style… When I first started doing this research in the 1990s, I used to think my children should be treated like they were extra-special. I’m careful not to do that now.”
—–
Follow redOrbit on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Instagram and Pinterest.
Comments