So today we're going to talk about

narcissism, a very popular topic on the

internet and we're going to look into

what's total BS and what's real. I'm

Spencer Greenberg. I'm the founder of

clearthinking.org. We run lots of

studies about human psychology and right

now we're actually running a study

related to narcissism. So I thought it'd

be a good time to do some narcissism

debunking. This video is from Med

Circle. They have 1.7 million

subscribers.

>> Have you ever seen a couple each of them

were a narcissist and they both admitted

that they were both narcissists?

>> Absolutely. Did those relationships

succeed?

>> No.

>> No.

>> No. And I'll tell you what happens is

that there's a point at which I I will

tell you there's a number of people I've

worked with who've admitted straight up

I'm a narcissist. I

>> So this is really interesting because a

lot of people think that narcissists

won't admit that they're narcissists,

but actually the way to think about this

is not that someone wouldn't admit

they're a narcissist. What I think is

more accurate is that narcissists either

won't admit they're narcissists because

they believe it's bad to be a narcissist

or they will admit they're a narcissist,

but they think that's actually a good

thing. And there's actually this really

interesting study on what they call the

sins, the single item narcissism scale.

And what this does is it asks a single

question essentially, are you a

narcissist? And it provides a little bit

of a definition. And they find that

actually this single question does a

pretty good job at picking out who's a

narcissist. It's not perfect. There are

definitely narcissists that are in

denial about it, but some narcissists

totally believe it. They just don't

think it's a bad thing. This is a

YouTube short about how to spot a

narcissist with almost 200,000 views.

There is this one facial feature that

sets narcissist apart from

non-narcissist. In other words, if you

would simply know how to recognize this

feature, you would never fall for them

again. Quite surprisingly, it is a

narcissist's eyebrows. Grandio

narcissist's eyebrows. Their eyebrows

are quite thick.

>> He's absolutely correct. This has been

scientifically proven. No, of course

not. This is complete I can't

believe this kind of gets 10,000

likes. This is ridiculous. You cannot

tell someone's personality based on

minor facial features. That just is

total nonsense. A stronger indication of

narcissism would actually be if people

modify their appearance. However, even

that is going to be a very weak

indicator because lots of people modify

their appearance for all kinds of

reasons. But the idea that thick

eyebrows means you're a narcissist, just

complete This next video is

from a super popular YouTuber, Healthy

Gamer GG. He talks a lot about

psychology and topics like that. This

video has a million views, and it's

about what makes a narcissist.

>> What causes narcissists to become

narcissists? Were they born that way or

exposed to trauma that caused them to

become that way? A narcissist forms from

conditional love. See, when we

unconditionally love someone, we teach

that person that there is something

within you that is good, that is

independent of how you act, how you

look, how you behave. When you are not

unconditionally loved and when you are

conditionally loved really really really

hard or not so much the love but when

the conditions are huge. When your whole

life is about conditional responses then

what happens is someone becomes very

attuned to things outside of them. They

become focused on the outside focused on

the outside. Focused on the outside and

that leads to narcissism.

>> So this is just one theory of what makes

narcissist. Uh, you know, I get when

you're educating, you want to state

something boldly and make it

interesting, but when you're taking a

really speculative theory among many

speculative theories and just saying,

well, this is what makes a narcissist. I

think it's unfortunate. Um, I think it's

a big exaggeration to say this is what

makes a narcissist. Possibly it's a

contributing factor. Um, but there are a

lot of different theories out there. One

thing we do know is that narcissism is

at least partly genetic. And you can see

this from studies of personality

disorders, for example. So here's a

paper looking at whether cluster B

personality disorders are heritable. So

this includes narcissistic personality

disorder but also antisocial, borderline

and histrionic. So what do they find in

this case? When they try to look at the

heritability based on interview or

self-report alone, they find

heritability is around.3 or point 4 for

these cluster B personality disorders.

But when they actually combine the

methods, they look at both self-report

and interviews together, they find

stronger heritabilities around 71 for

narcissistic personality disorder. But

the reality is there are a lot of

debates going on in the field of

genetics about how to do these

measurements and there is variability

depending on the method. So we can say

there is a genetic component but it's

not really clear how strong it is. It

could be as strong as you know 71

heritability that's a possibility or it

could be lower it could be.3.2 to

something like that. But we can't just

say that it's purely our environment.

There are a lot of different theories

about what creates narcissism, and I

don't think we really know with

confidence which theory might be true.

This next video is from SPS Insight.

They have 240,000 subscribers, and in

this case, they're interviewing a

narcissist.

>> What is it about your personality that

fits with that diagnosis?

>> What I find that fits into the diagnosis

is the constant need for admiration.

>> Check. That's absolutely one of the key

aspects of being a narcissist.

>> The constant state of boredom. But the

constant boredom leads me to do really

risky things. Like I've just done such

risky things that I don't even

understand how I'm alive.

>> That's interesting because it's not

actually as characteristic of

narcissistic personality disorder. It's

more characteristic of antisocial

personality disorder or informally what

people call a sociopath or psychopath.

And so, you know, it's a bit of a

surprise to me that she pointed at that

as evidence that she's a narcissist.

>> Like, I will do all of these things.

Like, I will do beauty pageantss. I've

done Miss Universe, Miss World, now I'm

doing Miss Earth. And that gives me such

a great sense of validation. And I feel

like that kind of boosts my internal

self-esteem. But again, if my external

sources run out, I cannot regulate it

myself and I will go into a very, very

dark place. So, this is a really

interesting point. A lot of people think

that narcissists are confident. They

feel really good about themselves. And

that's because they'll often, not

always, but often engage in very

arrogant bragging type behaviors that

make them seem like they think that

they're amazing person. But the reality

is their ego can deflate very rapidly

and it's incredibly painful for them

when it does. So, they're trying to

protect their ego and they love building

their ego up and getting admiration and

attention, but also it deeply hurts them

when their ego is threatened or

challenged. So unlike someone who has

stable self-confidence, that person

doesn't need external validation. They

don't need to brag about themselves or

get everyone to think they're amazing.

Whereas a narcissist, they have to

constantly get this external validation

to feel good. But at the same time, if

they get rejected or fail, feel like

they're not as good as someone else,

they can feel terrible, and their ego

can completely collapse.

>> I will do really reckless, impulsive

things like spend all my money or even

substances sometimes. And you've also

been diagnosed with antisocial

personality disorder.

>> Ah, there it is. Okay. So, she was also

diagnosed with antisocial personality

disorder. That could help explain the

impulsiveness. I think it's worth

digging into this a little bit because

antisocial personality disorder or being

a sociopath is often confused with

narcissistic personality disorder or

being a narcissist. So, we made this ven

diagram to help understand the

difference between narcissistic

personality disorder and antisocial

personality disorder. I'll talk about

the relationship between them in a

second. Like how connected are they? But

first, let's look at their differences.

So, the way this ven diagram works is

that the red section shows

commonalities. So, things that you tend

to find in both narcissists and

sociopaths. The orange on the left shows

things that are you tend to find in

narcissists but are less likely to be

found in sociopaths. Things on the right

and blue are more likely among

sociopaths, less likely among

narcissists. So on the left we see

things like desire to be the center of

attention, uh intense and broad need for

admiration. They constantly compare

themselves to others. On the flip side,

if we look at the the blue section about

sociopaths, we see they tend to be

extremely transactional in interpersonal

relationships. They tend to lack guilt

or shame. And this is a big one that

narcissists actually can feel deep

shame. You know, when their ego is

threatened and they have this ego

collapse, they can feel like they're

really bad and horrible. where

sociopaths are more likely to lack shame

and to be indifference towards how

they're perceived socially, except in so

far as it helps them get what they want.

We also see a lot of overlap though

between being a sociopath and being a

narcissist, like being self-centered,

being manipulative, having reduced

empathy, uh maybe enjoying power over

others and a sense of superiority. So,

there is a lot in common. In fact, you

see that scores on tests for being a

narcissist show really high correlations

with scores on tests for being a

sociopath. And I can show you that right

now on personalitymap.io, our platform.

So here we see a really high

correlation. In fact, in one study, we

see a 63 correlation between scores on

this test for being a narcissist and

scores on this test for being a

sociopath. So having traits of one

disorder does make you more likely to

have traits of the other disorder. This

next video is from Psych to Go. They

have almost 13 million subscribers. In

this video, they list signs of being a

narcissist. So let's take a look at some

of those signs.

>> Have you ever commented on something

someone said and they lashed out at you?

Maybe the reaction was more hostile than

expected. They think they're superior to

others around them and believe

themselves to be infallible.

>> So, this is definitely in the right

direction. It is true that narcissists

tend to take criticism poorly.

Basically, if their ego is threatened,

it makes them feel really, really bad

and often makes them lash out. But, I

will say I have known a number of

narcissists in my life and some of them

will admit to some flaws they have and

sometimes say that they've made a

mistake, which is interesting. And I

think what's going on here is they're

often willing to accept that they have

flaws and say that they made mistakes

around things that are not extremely

detrimental to their ego. So for

example, suppose a narcissist really

puts a lot of value in themselves as a

chef and they think they're an

incredible chef and they're better than

other people, etc. They may take a

criticism of food they made really,

really badly and blow up in anger. But

on the other hand, suppose a narcissist

thinks that cooking is really silly and

it's not something to be proud of and

they really don't put any of their ego

in it. They may not take it very harshly

because it doesn't actually really

affect their ego. They may just laugh it

off like, "Oh yeah, we're cooking stupid

anyway." So I think the key thing here

is not whether it's a criticism or

admitting mistake per se, but they're

very bad at dealing with anything that

it serves as a blow to their ego, no

matter what that is. and criticism and

mistakes often are blows to the ego

which can make them go into a denial or

lash out.

>> They exploit others without guilt or

shame.

>> It certainly is the case that

narcissists have a tendency to exploit

other people. But the without guilt or

shame bit is weird. That's actually more

characteristic of antisocial personality

disorder or sociopathy, not of

narcissistic personality disorder. In

fact, often narcissists when their ego

is crushed, they might feel really bad

about themselves. they might end up in a

shame spiral where they feel like, you

know, society rejects them and they're

worthless and so on. So, I think this is

mixing messages a little bit. It's

actually really common that people

confuse narcissistic traits with

antisocial traits. And it's important to

distinguish them because while they are

correlated, um, there's some really

important differences that are worth

noting. And if you're dealing with

someone in your life and you think they

could be a narcissist, it's actually

important to differentiate is this

person more of a narcissist or more of a

sociopath? Because the way that you deal

with them and the way you relate to them

might actually vary quite a bit

depending on which they are. And the

more you understand the way their own

mind works, the better you will be able

to deal with them if you're forced to or

if you decide to. This next video is a

TEDex talk by Anne Barnes on managing a

narcissist and it has a million views.

In our unthical world, we are surrounded

by these selfish, thirsty beings like

our parched Greek friend. They are

addicted to feeling special. Admiration

is everything.

>> That is truly a critical aspect of

narcissism. This intense desire for

admiration and attention that build up

the ego with the ideal form of it for

many narcissists being some kind of

worship.

>> You all know one.

You might even be sitting beside one.

>> You probably do know a narcissist. And

not just, oh, I dated a narcissist kind

of narcissist where that accusation gets

thrown around a lot, but someone with

narcissistic personality disorder. It's

estimated to be maybe two, three, four,

something like that percentage of the

population. So frequent enough that

unless you're a bit of a hermit, almost

certainly you have met people with

narcissistic personality disorder,

there's a decent chance you might even

have one in your life in some way.

>> Well, one thing we know for sure is that

their numbers are increasing. Hm. Well,

actually, that's not something we know

for sure. If anything, there's actually

quite a bit of evidence against that.

Now, in her defense, there were some

studies that suggested that maybe

narcissism was on the rise. But let's

look at some data on this. This paper is

called a farewell to the narcissism

epidemic. What the researchers did is

they looked at about a thousand

different studies related to narcissism

and they tried to tease out is it

increasing, is it decreasing, is it

staying the same, what's going on? A lot

of people think it's rising. Maybe in

part because some early studies

suggested that, but also maybe in part

because of social media. We see

narcissistic people putting themselves

in the spotlight all the time. And that

can give us a sense that we live in a

world that's becoming increasingly

narcissistic. But the reality is there's

a selection bias. Narcissistic people

are putting themselves in the spotlight

and social media is simply empowering

that. So what does the data actually

say? Well, here we have it from the

researchers. So data collection years

were meaningfully negatively associated

with narcissism scores in virtually all

analyses. So that says that actually if

anything narcissism might be going down

a little bit. We're not talking about

huge effects here. So it's probably

somewhere between flat and going down

according to these researchers. Here's

their conclusion. Here we provide

evidence for negative cross-temporal

changes in narcissism from 1982 to 2023

globally. Thus contrasting the idea of a

narcissism epidemic having taken place

at any point during the past four

decades. Another really interesting

reason why people think that narcissism

can be increasing is that younger people

tend to be more narcissistic than older

people. We can actually see this on our

platform personality map where we give

you free access to over a million

correlations about humans. So let's put

in narcissistic personality disorder and

let's see how it's connected to age. So

here we go. We're going to use this

measure of narcissistic personality

disorder called the PD. And now we're

going to take a look at how the

narcissistic personality score is linked

to age. And indeed we see here in this

red bar a negative correlation with age.

Not super strong but because of this

effect where younger people tend to be a

bit more narcissistic. It can lead

people to think that narcissism is

increasing because they look back at the

younger generation say look at how

narcissistic they are. But that doesn't

mean it's increasing because those

people might actually have lower

narcissism as they age. This next video

is from Lee Leblah. She's a therapist

and trauma coach and this video has

400,000 views. If your partner shows hum

humility and wants to learn from you or

from others, they listen to feedback

without overreacting

and they're willing to accept that maybe

you know a thing or two based on your

life experiences,

then they're not likely a narcissist.

>> So, this is an interesting one and I

think as a general rule, this is

probably right, but I do want to make a

caveat. Narcissists are often experts in

getting admiration because it's a thing

that they deeply care about and they've

been aiming for for much of their life.

And because of that, their behaviors can

actually be quite confusing to us

because they're doing something to get

admiration. In other words, to get you

to like them and admire them. And so,

they might say words like, "Oh, I really

respect your opinion." Or, you know,

you're completely right, etc. But it's

to get you to admire them. So just be

careful about that that you have to look

deeper at not just the words they say

but also their behavior subsequently and

the underlying motivations for those

words. There was a really interesting

study done where they had people

introduce themselves to a class and they

videotaped it and they measured the

narcissism of those people and then they

looked at a very interesting question

which is that do people like the

narcissist more having heard them

introduce themselves and the answer was

yes. the more narcissistic they were,

the more they tended to like that

person. So, they're really using many

different strategies to get you to like

them. That's why you really have to look

beneath these surface level things. Look

at their longer term behavior. Look at

their intentions and so on. If you want

to understand narcissism better, check

out my interview with a nameless

narcissist where I ask him a lot of

questions about what is it really like

to be a narcissist and why do you do the

things that you do or you can check out

the other video on our channel where we

dig into misconceptions about

narcissism. If you found this

interesting, I'd really appreciate it if

you subscribe. And if you want to

explore correlations with narcissism and

over a million other correlations, check

out our platform, personalitymap.io.

You can use it for free.

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