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full screen Whoever is more narcissistic than the average as a child will continue to be so as an adult, according to several compiled research studies. Archive image. Photo: Henrik Montgomery/TT
Anyone who is more narcissistic than average as a child will continue to be so as an adult. But the degree of narcissism appears to change with age, according to a new study.
It is researchers from Switzerland who have compiled a number of studies that have followed people with narcissistic personality disorder for a longer period of time. A total of over 37,000 people between the ages of 8 and 77 were included in the studies, the majority came from Western Europe, the USA and Canada.
Three types
The researchers divided the participants into three different types of narcissism – grandiose, antagonistic and neurotic. Grandiose narcissism means, among other things, that the person is attention-seeking and authoritarian, antagonistic, that the person is often arrogant, insensitive and lacks empathy, while the neurotic, among other things, has difficulty with emotion regulation.
Overall, the researchers found that all three types of narcissism resonated somewhat between childhood and into adulthood. Most clearly, the difference was for those with the grandiose variant
Develops character traits
But the researchers also saw that those who had very strong narcissistic traits as children continued to have strong traits compared to the “normal level” even as adults.
Researchers do not know why the narcissistic personality traits fade with age. But it could be because you adapt more as an adult, they reason.
“The social roles we take on as adults, as partners, as employees or parents, can cause them to develop more mature character traits,” says Ulrich Orth, the study’s lead author in a press release.