Do Narcissists Mellow with Age? (Studies)
13,512
Publicado 2024-07-18
Difference between real study (randomized trial), population study, and meta analysis.
Meta analyses “have the potential to mislead seriously, particularly if specific study designs, within-study biases, variation across studies, and reporting biases are not carefully considered.” (Cochrane Training)
Problems with this and most other studies and meta analyses about narcissism:
They are not randomized trial
Many use proprietary tests and questionnaires that are not validated
Children and adolescents included
Dearth of people diagnosed with NPD and no comorbidities. Most subjects are narcissistic style and dark triad.
Subjects only from the industrialized countries, white, male, often college students
Arbitrary, idiosyncratic classifications
Nine clinical features and trait domains of narcissism:
Lack of empathy
Fear of intimacy (insecure attachment style)
Disturbed or diffuse identity
Attention seeking behaviors
Grandiosity (cognitive distortion)
Anankastia
Negative affectivity, including fragility (bad object)
Dissociality (antisocial behaviors)
Antagonism
Only the last 2 traits mellow with age, not owing to learning from experience (the narcissist is incapable of that), but probably for biological reasons. The same mellowing is observed in psychopaths and borderlines.
LITERATURE
Orth, U., Krauss, S., & Back, M. D. (2024). Development of narcissism across the life span: A meta-analytic review of longitudinal studies.Psychological Bulletin, 150(6), 643–665. doi.org/10.1037/bul0000436
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Todos los comentarios (21)
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I can see how the narcissist might become more covert with age. This could appear as "mellowing" but would be entirely superficial.
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Dear Prof. Vaknin, I did survive, in large part thanks to your videos. I appreciate you very much. Thank you!
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You’ve said it before Sam, that all personality disorders are basically the same thing, the disruption of a constellated self. Superficial behaviours and some traits may change to a small degree but the emptiness and schizoid core are lifelong sadly, just ask the borderline. Lastly the decrease in antagonism and antisocial behaviour could be (IMO) be to testosterone and other hormones peaking and shifting over the lifetime.
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I'm always wondering how the narcissists are chosen for the studies... are they in prison, jail, in therapy? If narcissists don't participate much in therapy, how do academicians select narcissists for the studies?
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Still Here Sam, thanks for the video, sad to hear narcissism won’t subside over time, I was hoping for the best, ha ha…
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Cannot disagree. Witnessing all this every day. It seems that so called studies are used as a tool to boost views on social platforms for monetary gain rather than actually reflect the real social issues. Reason why Sam uses "self proclaimed specialists" or life coaches in any other way proves the point. Words are not used to teach anymore but rather to attract the general public to the channels. I personally had "an honor" to witness close relationships with both NPD and BPD in my lifetime and can say that majority of studies i faced don't reflect the essence of the disordered person him/herself but rather analyze a certain trait and sum up the results as a whole. This pretty much equals a 10% of analysis and presents the results as 100%. Unfortunately people do buy that simply because it just sounds good.
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Thank you so much Dear Sam Vaknin❤
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I'm delving rrright in with my coffee
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I think you're just dismissing the science about narcissists eyebrows because of your own eyebrows. I'm joking by the way 😂
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Apparently the one that used to be in my life did mellow with age. Because he had a stroke that changed his personality. He is the only narcissist I am aware of in my microcosm that was not cruel and nasty toward everyone during end-of-life-care. Everyone else got WORSE! I side-eye studies that say they get better.
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Thank you 🙏
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Thanks!
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I'm addicted to your videos and books. Do you know of any studies on the effects of psychedelics on narcissists? MDMA has had good results with PTSD too. The person I think is a narcissist had a psychedelic experience that seamed to confront her with her impending old age. I've read in your book about accepting old age with humour makes people lose their narcissism
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Predators might get “less aggressive” with age,.. and start employing Covert tactics.
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Wow!
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Thank you
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I would love it if you covered reactive abuse. The dark empath thing seems to be a bigger problem of people trying to put themselves in boxes of feeling special. Like the sigmas, alphas, and other nonsense. Seems to be a strange byproduct of social media.
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So on which age becomes the narcissist a real Narcissist, over 25? When the person is over 25, you can diagnose the person with NPD? And is the age different from gender?
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😁. Joyful to watch. 🙏🎻🫶🏻
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Hey Sam. I’ve been wondering if psychopathy could be a coping mechanism/ adaptation developed in response to intermittent reinforcement. This would also explain goal orientation. Do you know if this is possible/ there is any research about this?