Narcissistic personality disorder, a mental health condition in which a person’s sense of importance is abnormally high, is surprisingly common – up to 5 per cent of the population may have it. And now, thanks to a new study, we know how those diagnosed with the condition change over time.
Researchers discovered that people tend to become less narcissistic as they get older, seeing a decrease as they go from childhood through to older adulthood.
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However, differences among individuals remain level over time. In other words, people who are more narcissistic than their peers as children tend to remain that way as adults.
“These findings have important implications given that high levels of narcissism influence people’s lives in many ways – both the lives of the narcissistic individuals themselves and, maybe even more, the lives of their families and friends,” said lead author Prof Ulrich Orth from the University of Bern.
Publishing their results in the journal Psychological Bulletin, Orth and his team analysed data from 51 studies, all of which measured how participants’ levels of narcissism changed over time.
These studies included a total of 37,247 participants ranging in age from 8 to 77 with a nearly equal split of sex (52 per cent female and 48 male).
Each study identified which of the three types of narcissism it tracked: agentic, antagonistic, and neurotic. Agentic narcissism encompasses feelings of grandiosity, superiority and a need for admiration. Antagonistic narcissism involves arrogance and a lack of empathy, while neurotic narcissism is characterised by hypersensitivity and emotional dysregulation.
The researchers found that all three types declined from childhood through old age. The decline was small for agentic narcissism, while it was more moderate for antagonistic and neurotic narcissism.
The fact that people's narcissism relative to that of their peers did not change significantly, Orth said, “was true even across very long periods of time, which suggests that narcissism is a stable personality trait”.
One limitation of the study, however, was that much of the research was carried out in the US and Western Europe. The team hopes to further study narcissism in a wider range of countries to extend the results further.
While the team discovered a decrease in narcissism with age, the reasons are still unclear. “One theory suggests that the social roles we take on in adulthood, for example as a partner, a parent, an employee and so on, lead to the development of more mature personality characteristics, including lower levels of narcissism,” Orth said.
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