Category: Psychology

May 10, 2016

Narcissists tend to be insufferable. They are self-absorbed, have an inflated view of their own talents, crave attention and admiration, and are extremely selfish.

Thus it’s distressing that Americans are typically perceived as narcissistic—even thought likely to meet the diagnostic criteria for the psychiatric disorder—
according to a study conducted by UGA psychologists in collaboration with colleagues from around the world.

The reality is that in most epidemiological surveys fewer than one in 100 individuals meet the diagnostic criteria for the narcissistic personality disorder, marking it as a relatively rare disorder—whether in the United States or elsewhere.

The study indicates that the perception of American narcissism is far worse than the actual incidence. “We might have a narcissistic culture,” said Keith Campbell, study coauthor and head of the Department of Psychology, “but the people themselves aren’t necessarily narcissistic.”

New research from the University of Georgia department of psychology gives researchers a unique glimpse at how humans develop an ability to use tools in childhood while nonhuman primates—such as capuchin monkeys and chimpanzees—remain only occasional tool users.

Dorothy Fragaszy, a psychology professor in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences and director of the Primate Behavior Laboratory at UGA, created two studies to look at how nonhuman primates and human children differ in completing simple spatial reasoning tasks.

Much like a game of Operation, human children ages 2, 3 and 4 and adult nonhuman primates were asked to fit a stick, a cross and a tomahawk into a matching cutout space on a tray. Children were also given an opportunity to complete this task by placing the sticks on a mat with a drawing of the matching shape, as well as into a space on a tray.

“We did the study with nonhuman primates specifically to look at the management of objects in space,” Fragaszy said. “I wanted to give them a spatial reasoning task that was not a tool-using task. We wanted to look at how they worked with these objects and arranged them in relation to features of another surface and from that gain some insight as to how they use objects as tools.

“In the case of the children, we wanted to see how they completed the same spatial reasoning task, but with a developmental dimension to it that is not present with our study of nonhuman primates because they were all adults.”

What they found, she said, was a clear age effect in the children. Two-year-olds were able to fit the straight stick and the cross-shaped stick properly into the cutout most of the time. Three- and 4-year-olds were even better at it. However, when it came time to fit the tomahawk stick into the cutout, 2-year-olds were unable to complete the task most of the time, while 3- and 4-year-olds were also challenged.

Children were adept at using sight to help figure out how an object should be aligned to fit it into the space. Sometimes some of the 3- and 4-year-olds would hold the object, especially the cross or tomahawk stick, a little bit above the tray and move it in the air as if they were aligning it visually before they put it down.

Instead of depending on sight, nonhuman primates often used their sense of touch, known as their haptic senses, to feel how the object fit into the space.

“Adult chimps and capuchin monkeys are among the most accomplished spatial problem solvers among the nonhuman primates, but even the 2-year-olds are much better than they are at alignment,” Fragaszy said.

Between 16-18 months and 2 years, humans develop a new relationship between vision and action. Prior to this development, they have trouble orienting another object that’s not their own body in space.

When asked to complete the task in a two-dimensional version that involved visually aligning an object in the correct place, children were less successful and made fewer attempts than with the three-dimensional tasks.

“This makes sense if you think about the contribution of haptic perception to what’s going on,” Fragaszy said. “You can feel when a three-dimensional object hits the edge of a cutout. You don’t feel anything with a flat two-dimensional object such as a disk. It indicates again that vision is not enough for young children. The haptic component is also helpful for them. For nonhuman primates, the haptic component is essential.”

Humans use what’s known as a vision for action system. Visual information is integrated into planning action and guiding movements of the body in space, especially to use the hands to reach for and grasp objects and manipulate them in space. Researchers have studied what happens if part of that system doesn’t work very well, but researchers haven’t known much about how that system develops until now.

“People have thought for a long time about what makes tool use difficult for nonhuman primates and easy for humans, but they haven’t thought about it in this way,” she said. “I’m hopeful that this will generate further research on this, both with humans and nonhuman primates, to clarify the answer to this question.”

The study, “‘Vision for Action’ in Young Children Aligning Multi-Featured Objects: Development and Comparison with Nonhuman Primates,” appears in the journal PLOS ONE and can be viewed at http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0140033.

By Alan Flurry

Americans consistently reported a perception of the typical U.S. citizen as highly narcissistic—even meeting diagnostic criteria for the psychiatric disorder, according to studies conducted by University of Georgia psychologists in collaboration with colleagues from around the world.

The reality is that fewer than one in 100 individuals meets the diagnostic criteria for the narcissistic personality disorder in most epidemiological surveys, marking it as a relatively rare disorder.

Narcissism is associated with excessive interest in oneself and one’s appearance and ranges from self-confidence to extreme selfishness, with a grandiose view of one’s own talents, self-absorption and a desire for attention and admiration.

The study, “Narcissism and United States’ Culture: The View from Home and Around the World,” was published in September in the early online edition of Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

The published research represents six studies that include surveys of American college students, American adults and participants from around the world about their perception of Americans. Two of the studies include data from citizens of other world regions (Basque Country, China, England and Turkey), in which citizens were asked to rate citizens of their own regions, as well as from the U.S.

Data from international samples indicated some general tendency to rate the citizens of one’s country or region as more narcissistic than acquaintances or oneself—that is, these finding were not specific to America. However, the differences in these ratings (self versus citizens in general) were smaller in other countries than they were in the U.S., meaning these perceptions are particularly elevated in America.

Although non-Americans from many other parts of the world viewed the typical American as highly narcissistic, they did not cast U.S. citizens in a purely negative light.

“They also said Americans are less neurotic, as well as more extroverted and conscientious, so it wasn’t just an indiscriminant criticism of Americans,” said study co-author Joshua Miller, a professor and director of the clinical training program in the UGA Franklin College of Arts and Sciences’ department of psychology. “It was a specific profile of traits that just happens to be very consistent with what we call grandiose narcissism-these sort of hyper confident, aggressive, assertive individuals.”

In fact, Americans in the surveys held harsher opinions of their fellow citizens. The profile Americans hold of the typical American was more uniformly negative. The researchers posit these perceptions may, in part, be the results of an emphasis on celebrity culture and the rapidly growing influence and role of social media.

“We are inundated with images and information about people from groups who tend to score higher on narcissism,” Miller said. “That doesn’t mean all celebrities are narcissistic. Some may be, and we might incorrectly assume others are on the information available to us in the public domain.”

Evidence indicates the perception of American narcissism is worse than the actual incidence—and skewed by the fact that, in the survey, respondents considered a limited array of people.

“People likely don’t think of their 320 million fellow citizens who live in this country when completing these ratings but of particularly salient examples who may well be narcissistic—and they are extroverted, perhaps over-exposed, and that is reflected in these perceptions,” Miller said.

One of the studies demonstrated that Americans did not uniformly see all Americans as equally narcissistic when given specific exemplars to rate. Instead, research participants rated younger Americans, male Americans and Americans in highly visible and high-status occupations (such as athletes and politicians) as particularly narcissistic.

“It’s interesting that the perception of the typical person, which is essentially a measure of the culture, is so much more narcissistic than the actual people in the culture,” said study co-author Keith Campbell, a professor and head of the department of psychology. “We might have a narcissistic culture, but the people aren’t necessarily all narcissistic.”

The researchers agreed that much in the profile of Americans held by Americans and non-Americans alike was not necessarily indicative of general psychopathology. Instead, the perception was relatively narrow and specific in its focus on narcissism.

“Americans are not viewed as pathologically retreating, submissive or shy. It’s the tendency to act out, externalizing blame and consume more resources than you deserve that is specifically seen as a defining characteristic of Americans,” Miller said.

“The bad news is everyone else in the world agrees. And there’s consensus with the world, so we have this very interesting bias for how we see ourselves as a culture,” Campbell said.

“But the silver lining is we’re not as bad as we think.”

The study’s abstract is available online at http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/2015-43587-001/