ME, MYSELF AND I

The sorrows of the narcissist as a social animal

It was late March and the sun had just risen on a cool day in Paris as I went out for an early-morning run. Thirty minutes later, I decided to turn back and return to the hotel. I quickly climbed the stairs leading from the bank of the Seine, where I ran, to the street adjacent to the Notre Dame Cathedral. The city, whose beauty was a bit distant from river level, became palpable as early-rising pedestrians emerged, along with a few cars that moved unimpeded on the streets at that hour. An illuminated billboard was the first to greet me in the new surroundings. At first, I almost didn’t notice it, but there was something in the advertisement that was sufficiently disturbing to make me stop, take a few steps backwards and look again.

I stood facing a billboard with a framed photograph of a young woman, casually draped in bright burgundy-colored cloth, reclining on a worn sofa. Her elegant and fashionable clothing hung loosely on her body, generously exposing shapely legs; heavy jewelry dangled from the delicate joints of her body. With one of her arms propped against the sofa, her head tilted sensuously toward what seemed at first to be the head of another woman, who was making an identical gesture and reciprocated with a head tilt of her own.

The talented advertiser had achieved his or her objective: I interrupted my run and approached the photograph to examine it more closely. Then I realized there was no other woman. The model leaned longingly toward an image of her own face, peering at her from a mirror.

This advertisement, for a well-known Parisian fashion house, expresses the spirit of the times, I thought to myself as I returned to the monotone pace of running. Gone are the days of producing perfume from the sex glands of animals in order to capture the attention of members of the opposite sex. Gone too are the days when women dressed nicely to impress men, or equally important, other women. It seems that today we suffice with impressing ourselves. What is the common denominator between a 16-year-old who boasts of accumulating 3,000 Facebook friends in a single month, and a racecar driver who defies the team manager and passes his teammate in an important race, and a corporate executive who pays no heed to others and only focuses on aggrandizing himself? All of them are standing at the edge of the same pool of water and looking at their social reflection. Welcome to the global lake of narcissism.

Once, when we were more social

From the dawn of history, the human race has adopted a survival strategy based on culture: a consensual system of beliefs, values, practices, ceremonies and symbols that serve as the foundation for the way people conduct their social relations. The place of the individual has largely been defined by the culture, which changes as humanity wrestles with new challenges. While it was impossible to physically survive in the savannah of Africa 150,000 years ago without belonging to a tribe, today social affiliation meets other needs, primarily psychological.

Indeed, if we try to define a particular individual, we’ll discover that we can’t do this without referring to others, usually members of the group to which the individual belongs. Among many mammals, the distinction between individuals in the group is made via a hierarchy in the social structure, and this is especially prominent in the primate population, including some of the species that are particularly close to human beings.

Nature researchers have identified social behavior in many other species, including some that are very distant from us in their level of development. Wolves share their food in a relatively fair way with other members of their pack and rely on them to help raise their offspring. Among horses, elephants, hyenas and dolphins, we can observe friendships that span many years. One study found almost humanlike social behavior among 120 collies—behavior that was even more social than that of nature’s greatest co-operators: the chimpanzees.

Already in the early 20th century, the psychologist Alfred Adler suggested that the basic need for belonging has evolutionary survival advantages. He also asserted that the main motivation for our activity is social (not necessarily sexual, as his predecessor Freud believed), and that the need to belong is a profound human need. Adler’s hypotheses have recently resonated in the work of two researchers of animal behavior from the University of Pennsylvania. Dorothy Cheney and Robert Seyfarth challenged the traditional Darwinian assumption that the most aggressive, competitive and dominant in the packs of different species receive the privilege of producing more offspring.

The two conducted research on the social behavior of baboons, examining the social habits of 90 monkeys in Botswana for over 15 (!) years. They wrote about their work in a fascinating book—Baboon Metaphysics: The Evolution of a Social Mind. The authors discovered that the best predictor of a female baboon’s fertility (number of offspring) is actually the strength of her social connection with other females in the group. They also found that survival rates and life expectancy were higher among offspring of female baboons who exhibited well-developed social connections.

For the sake of science, the two researchers did not hesitate to get their hands dirty: They examined the droppings of the female baboons in order to trace substances that are usually secreted when experiencing tension and stress. The death of a close member of the group led to a higher presence of these substances in their droppings. But the researchers soon found that after such tragic occurrences, the females created social connections with new females, and the indicators of distress in their droppings disappeared. It seems that even natural selection prefers baboons who develop social connections within and outside of the family. A different study found that the level of oxytocin (a “cooperation hormone” also called the “trust molecule”) among chimpanzees who spend their time delousing other chimpanzees is similar to the high hormone level stimulated by the presence of close blood relations.

However, many of the human alternatives to the social activity of delousing disappeared near the end of the 19th century. The traditional connection of people to their land and to their small community gave way to the new possibilities that industrialization engendered, as well as the alienation created by the process of accelerated urbanization. In the earlier way of life, people drew most of their psychological well-being, identity and even their sense of self-worth from their group affiliation. Today, however, we have slowly and surely reached a situation in which people derive their sense of psychological well-being and self-esteem from their unique personal characteristics and individual achievements.

It is interesting, therefore, to examine what happened along the way—from the rural society of the 19th century to the individualistic society of today. It is an interesting coincidence that the science of psychology developed during this same period. In the years since Adler presented his theories, many behavioural scientists have been asked their learned opinions on the important connection between the individual and society.

The balance between egoism and belonging

“We can picture a person standing on an axis with his selfish needs on one end and his basic need for belonging and connection on the other end,” Prof. Gilad Hirschberger from the IDC Herzliya wrote in the inaugural edition of the Alaxon digital magazine (in Hebrew). “The individual continually tries to maintain the fine balance between personal advancement and acceptance by others. If he acts too selfishly, the society will react with rejection and exclusion. If he invests a lot in others, his own personal needs are liable to suffer. The equilibrium is elusive and is influenced by many dynamic forces.”

I went back to Prof. Hirschberger to try to understand the nature of the forces that affect the equilibrium. “The tension between egoism and belonging is in my view the very heart of psychology,” he said in an interview. “If we had no need for others and their approval, we’d act in a purely selfish way. Since our existence is conditional upon cooperating with others, and our place in society depends on how others assess us, we have to continually balance the naked personal interest and the desire to belong.”

A study conducted by Roy Baumeister and his colleagues at Florida State University found that the group also benefits when it maintains distinctions between its individual members and that it loses this advantage when its members take on a homogenous identity. That is, the society, and not only the individual, benefits when “the elusive balance point” is in the right place.

People whose connections with their surroundings are insufficiently developed and whose sense of social affiliation is deficient are prone to suffer behavioral and health problems, Baumeister asserts in an article he co-authored with Mark Leary of Duke University in 1995. The article, entitled “The Need to Belong: Desire for Interpersonal Attachments as a Fundamental Human Motivation,” argues that social behavior can be largely explained by the basic need to belong. In their seminal article, the authors claim that the need to belong is more important than most of the other sources of motivation, and that our thoughts, emotions and behavior focus on this need. Many of our anxieties stem from the fear of rejection and social isolation, Baumeister and Leary contend. Their research drew extraordinary attention, which reflected the interest in their new thesis, which was based on sociology, anthropology, political science and, of course, psychology.

But the desire to belong to a group is not enough, Leary said in an interview filmed in 2015. Members of the group also need to accept us. The traditional emphasis on the desire to belong overlooks the fact that we don’t merely want to belong—once we become part of the group, we also seek to become prominent in some way. We might try to stand out as a hilarious joke-teller, as an authority on the latest trends in the movie industry, or in a myriad of other ways.

Igor Grossmann and Michael Varnum of the University of Waterloo wrote an article introducing another innovative and primarily social approach to understanding the growth of individualism. Grossman shared the key points of the article at a conference of the Association for Psychological Science (APS) held in Washington in May 2013. His presentation, entitled “The Rise of Middle Class Individualism in America,” began with two illustrations showing a family sitting at the dinner table. In one, from the 1950s, everyone is engaged in lively conversation. In the second illustration, from a few years ago, everyone is looking at the television in the corner of the room. The television, which is absent from the first illustration, is showing a football game. The two illustrations, Grossman argues, represent the cultural change that has occurred in the past 50 years. It appears that the traditional society of the mid-1900s, when people enjoyed direct interaction with those living in close proximity, was supplanted by a society in which people forgo human interaction, opting instead for media tailored to their needs and tastes.

Drawing upon data indicating that Americans have become more self-centered, Grossman wondered whether this represents a cultural change (as opposed to a political-economic one) or a change dictated by the media. Thus, he sought to trace the role of changes related to the urbanization of America and the development of social classes. And instead of relying on questionnaires with self-reporting by impatient students, he examined real data.

Grossman based his research on several factors that he views as indicators of the level of individualism in a society: the type of names given to newborns (the relative frequency of unique versus conventional names), the prevalence of words reflecting individualism versus collectivism in statements by leaders, and the frequency of the appearance of these words in books over a period of time.

In the analysis of baby names, there is an implicit assumption that unique names indeed reflect individualism. The conventional index is the percentage of boys and girls who receive one of the 20 most popular names in their year of birth. (A low percentage reflects a high level of individualism.) An analysis conducted by the psychologist Jean Twenge and her colleagues on baby names during the years 1880–2011 indicates that the percentage of unique names has risen continually, especially since World War II.

In 1946, for example, over 5% of the boys were named James and more than 4% of the girls were given the name Mary. During that period, one of every three newborn boys received one of the ten most popular names, as did one of every four newborn girls. Half of all the boys born in the U.S. immediately after World War II received one of the 23 most common names. In the middle of the first decade of the 21st century, on the other hand, the relative prevalence of the most popular names (Jacob and Emily) was only 1%. (In Israel too, the names of biblical patriarchs and matriarchs of the 1950s gave way to “cooler” names, and in 2007 only 2.5% of newborn boys shared the most popular name, Itai.)

In a particularly interesting analysis, Grossman and his research partners examined the speeches of U.S. presidents dating back to 1860, identifying verbs that express individualism (prefer, differ, own, achieve) versus collectivist verbs (give, belong, share, together). They indeed found an increase in the use of individualist words, peaking during the period of Bill Clinton’s presidency. A similar analysis of literary texts from 1860–2006 found comparable results with a particularly high statistical correlation (which weakened slightly toward the end of the period).

Grossman tried to isolate the factors that combined to create a more individualistic society. Using complex statistical equations, he ruled out technological change as a possible cause. Changes in population density and urbanization, the incidence of contagious disease and natural disasters (people tend to give unique names after collective traumas like wars) also fail to offer a satisfactory correlation with individualism. The only factor that correlates with the phenomenon is social class, as measured by a combination of average income and level of education. As income and education level rise, there is a greater tendency to give newborns unique names, and certain words appear more frequently in presidential speeches. Thus, according to Grossman, social class is the best indicator of individualism in a society.

The most narcissistic generation in history

The importance of unique cultural components in the self-image of people from different nations offers some hope that the trend of rising individualism may slow globally. When asked to choose a pen from a pile of different colored pens, Koreans will prefer the most common color, while Americans will select the least common color, the unique one. Advertisements in Korea emphasize that behaving like others is the proper thing to do.

But whether the viewpoint is psychological or socio-cultural, the learned discussion on balancing the need to belong and the need for uniqueness cannot easily explain the cultural whirlwind in Western countries that led to a completely new equilibrium—one that enables self-expression bordering on narcissism, while maintaining a sense of belonging. In a process that began somewhere in the early 2000s, the consumer culture and the creation of social networks upset the delicate historical balance between the need to belong and the need to express our desires as individuals whose interests don’t necessarily correspond to those of the society. As the consumer culture enabled us to emphasize our uniqueness by choosing our favorite brands (many of which start with “My” or “I”), the social networks offered the ultimate technology for presenting ourselves to others in the most positive way possible. Our brains easily resolve the random dissonance in the way we describe ourselves on the Internet as compared to the glum reality of our lives. After all, we have long become accustomed to relegating information to our subconscious that might show our character (and especially our integrity) in a negative light. The psychological model underlying the social networks seems to award the highest scores to those who leverage their narcissism most effectively—that is, those who receive the greatest amount of social attention while investing relatively little in others. This achievement is not obvious, if we remember that we ultimately need others more than they need us. In addition, social networks are always enticing as a means of conveying a coveted sense of belonging without requiring a burdensome commitment.

How did this happen? Is it possible to identify other characteristics—besides the increase in buying power, education and the possibilities offered by Internet technology—that engendered a narcissistic and corrosive version of individualism?

The psychologist Jean Twenge addresses this question in her book entitled Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled—and More Miserable Than Ever Before. The book describes in disturbing detail the price that America is paying for the education that more and more young people are receiving, which prioritizes a sense of self-worth over achievement. Consequently, these young people prefer “me” to anything else.

The author argues that both parents and educators have contributed to creating the most narcissistic generation in history—parents by failing to set limits for their children and the education system by sanctifying the pupils’ sense of self-worth at the expense of self-discipline and educational seriousness. In this system, prizes and awards are routine, and everyone eventually receives one. The “Pupil of the Month,” the “Spelling Prize” or “Outstanding Member of the Debating Team” are some of the creative titles designed to boost a pupil’s confidence. Hard work is more highly valued than learning achievements, and two of every three educators are willing to raise the grades of pupils who convince them that they had tried hard enough. In such an atmosphere, it is no surprise that some of the ethnic groups with the lowest self-esteem lead U.S. pupils in academic performance.

Twenge wrote her second book, The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement, together with Keith Campbell, a psychologist who also specializes in this subject. The book presents the conventional questionnaire used to identify excessive self-esteem—the respondents’ desire to wield control in the world, their inclination to define themselves as special, and the ease with which they perceive themselves as deserving. The responses of American college students indicate a 15% increase in the number of narcissists in 2008 compared to 1996. In general, one of every four Americans is today ranked as highly narcissistic, and 10% are defined as clinically narcissistic. This percentage increases annually at the same threatening pace as the spiraling rise in obesity.

Of the 23 women and men who served in President Eisenhower’s cabinet (1953–61), only one—the Secretary of Agriculture—published memoirs after leaving office. In comparison, 12 of the 30 cabinet members in the Reagan administration considered their lives important enough to interest the public and published memoirs after Reagan completed his term in 1989.

The growing incidence of narcissism is accompanied by a decrease in the level of interpersonal trust and empathy, and a steep decline in the importance young people attribute to a “meaningful philosophy” in their lives. While 12% of young people in 1950 regarded themselves as an “important person,” this soared to 80% in the early 1990s. Research conducted by the psychologist Nathan DeWall and his colleagues also found an increase in narcissistic expressions in the lyrics of pop music.

Twenge and Campbell also contend that the economic crisis in 2008 is attributable to the epidemic of narcissism, which encourages people to consume beyond their means in order to look richer and more successful than they really are. The credit offered by financial institutions fosters an atmosphere in which the growth in plastic credit cards is second only to the growth in plastic surgery (up 300% since the mid-1970s). This reinforces Grossman’s findings, which suggest that the increase in disposable income is responsible for the growth of individualism in American society.

In a lecture in 2014, Keith Campbell expressed hope that this trend and its associated cultural values can be reversed without suffering another economic collapse. In the meantime, he suggests that we stop focusing on boosting a sense of self-worth as a social objective, develop self-control and adopt a bit more compassion in our personal and public lives.