Millennials Are More Narcissistic Than Their Parents

POINT

Millennials have some great virtues: As a group, they are technologically savvy, socially tolerant, and engaged. They value their quality of life as equal to their career, seeking a balance between home and work. In these ways, millennials surpass their baby boomer parents, who are less technologically adept, less tolerant, and more localized, and who have a history of striving to get ahead at all costs. However, millennials have a big Achilles' heel-they are more narcissistic.

Several large-scale, longitudinal studies found that millennials are more likely than baby boomers to have seemingly inflated views of themselves, and psychologists have found narcissism has been growing since the early 1980s. More millennials rate themselves as above average on attributes such as academic ability, leadership, public speaking ability, and writing ability Millennials are also more likely to agree they would be "very good " spouses (56 percent, compared to 37 percent among 1980 graduates), parents (54 percent; 36 percent for 1980 graduates), and workers (65 percent; 49 percent for 1980 graduates).

Cliff Zukin, a senior faculty fellow at Rutgers University, believes the reason is in the childhood upbringing of millennials. "This is the most affirmed generation in history," he said. "They were raised believing they could do anything they wanted to, and that they have skills and talents to bring to a job setting." Jean M. Twenge, author of Generation Me, agrees. "People were not saying, 'Believe in yourself' and 'You are special' in the '60s."

Narcissism is bad for society, and particularly bad for the workplace. "[Narcissists] tend to be very self-absorbed; they value fun in their personal and their work life," one administrator said. "I can't expect them to work on one project for any amount of time without getting bored."

COUNTERPOINT

Wasn't "The Me Generation" generations ago? Honestly, every generation thinks they are better than the ones that come after! "You can find complaints [about the younger generation] in Greek literature, in the Bible," Professor Cappelli of the Wharton School observed. "There's no evidence Millennials are different. They're just younger." While millennials are the twenty-somethings of today, what is universally true is that young people share certain characteristics ... because they are young.

A recent study shows the similarity between how millennials and baby boomers thought about themselves at the same stage of life. As college freshmen, 71 percent of millennials thought they were above average academically, and 63 percent of baby boomers thought the same thing when they were college freshmen. Similarly, 77 percent of millennials believed they were above average in the drive to achieve, versus 68 percent for baby boomers. In other words, "Every generation is Generation Me."

In some ways, millennials may be less narcissistic than baby boomers today. As one manager observed, "[Millennials] don't have that line between work and home that used to exist, so they're doing Facebook for the company at night, on Saturday or Sunday. We get incredible productivity out of them." Millennials also may be more altruistic. For example, 29 percent of millennials believe individuals have a responsibility to remain involved in issues and causes for the good of all, while only 24 percent of baby boomers feel the same level of responsibility.

Rather than comparing different generations, it is more accurate to compare people at one life stage with others at the same life stage. Research supports that people in their twenties tend to be more narcissistic than people in their fifties. Millennials are in their twenties, and many of their parents are in their fifties, and millennials are no more narcissistic than baby boomers were in their youth.

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