Further Evidence of an Increase in Narcissism Among College Students

ABSTRACT Our meta-analysis also finds no change over time in Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) scores among California college students, most likely due to the cultural and ethnic shifts at the University of California campuses over this time (especially the large increase in Asian-American student enrollment). Students in the rest of the country, from 27 campuses, show an increase of d=0.41 in narcissism over 24 years. The finding that high school students' self-esteem does not change replicates our previous cross-temporal meta-analysis. The self-enhancement measure used by the authors is flawed, as it uses self-reported grades rather than an objective measure. Sampling issues are minor, as the meta-analysis was a representative sampling of college students. Finally, problems with a simplistic “good” and “bad” labeling of NPI factors are discussed.

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