Do people become narcissists because their parents are too mean to them or too nice? These opposing theories both have proponents, but it is the latter that gets support from the first long-term study of narcissistic traits in children.
Freudian psychoanalysts were the first to propose that children with cold and unloving parents compensate by loving and praising themselves excessively. But more recently, others have claimed that narcissism arises from the opposite problem 鈥� of parents praising their children too much, giving them an inflated sense of their own worth.
This might seem more intuitive, but the cold-parents theory is still alive and well among some psychoanalysts. To test this idea, at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands and his colleagues studied 565 children between the ages of 7 to 12, a period that often sees the emergence of narcissistic traits such as selfishness, self-centredness and vanity. 鈥淧revious studies were all conducted in adults,鈥� says Brummelman. 鈥淲e wanted to see how [narcissism] develops over time.鈥�
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Over 18 months, the children and their parents were given several detailed questionnaires that were designed to measure narcissistic traits and parental behaviour. Children, for example, had to give a rating of the extent to which they agreed with statements such as 鈥渕y mother lets me know she loves me鈥� and 鈥渒ids like me deserve something extra鈥�. Although parental warmth had no effect on the children鈥檚 narcissism, there was a small but significant link at each stage between how much parents praised their children and how narcissistic the children were six months later.
Because the effect was only small, it suggests that other things also make people selfish and self-centred, perhaps genetics, says Brummelman. But the fact there was any correlation at all does seem to pour cold water on the cold-parents theory, he says.
Clich茅 rings true
Complaints about various shortcomings of 鈥渢he youth of today鈥� are heard in every generation, yet when it comes to narcissism, the clich茅 may for once be true.
People really do seem to have according to a meta-analysis of students in US colleges.
In a previous study, Brummelman鈥檚 team developed a scale to measure how much people overvalue their offspring by giving children maths tests and seeing . 鈥淭he overvaluers praise no matter how well their children do, and they overestimate their [children鈥檚] IQ too,鈥� he says.
However, , a psychoanalyst at University College London, says that cold parenting is an oversimplification of the psychoanalytical position. He thinks narcissism in children would have a stronger correlation with parents undervaluing their children or failing to give praise when it is due 鈥� something the latest study did not measure.
Journal reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI:
