The science of narcissism with W. Keith Campbell

0:02 A listener production. This is Crappita Happy and I am your host, Cas Done. I'm a clinical and coaching psychologist and mindfulness meditation teacher. And of course author of the Crappita Happy books. In this show, I bring you conversations with interesting, inspiring, intelligent people who are experts in their field and who have something of value to share that will help you feel less crappy and more happy. A couple of months ago, I joined TikTok and started posting some videos on ideas in psychology that I thought people would find interesting that I find interesting to talk about. I was curious to see what all the fuss was about, not really sure what to expect. So it came as a complete shock to me when I posted a couple of videos on the topic of narcissism and they blew up.

0:52 Within days, I had. Thousands, in fact hundreds of thousands of views. I gained fifteen thousand new followers in the space of a couple of weeks, and my video on grandiose narcissism has now been viewed almost a million times. And like I said, it was in the space of a few weeks. It became very clear to me as I tried to answer people's questions about narcissism and narcissists, that people are hungry for information on this topic, and so I knew that I had to get one of the world's narcissism experts onto the show to tell me more about it. Keith Campbell is a professor of psychology at the University of Georgia in the United States. He's written a bunch of books on this topic. He's been studying narcissism for a long time. His most recent book is called The New Science of Narcissism that came out in twenty twenty, and back in two thousand and nine he wrote a book called The Narcissism Epidemic. He co wrote that with Gene Twangy.

1:48 So in our chat, Keith and I cover a lot of ground, including what narcissism actually is, the difference between grandiose and vulnerable narcissists, which is something that has really misunderstood, how to spot us in a friend or a loved one, and what you can do if you're worried your kids might becoming a bit narcissistic. This is a topic I find fascinating and I know that you will too. Here's Keith. Keith Campbell, thank you so much for joining me on the Craffit to Happy podcast today. Well, thanks for having me, Keith. I want to give you a little bit of background before we start talking about this topic of narcissism in the world today. So I am a psychologist as well. I recently joined TikTok.

2:30 I thought I had no followers on TikTok, and I thought I'll just start posting some little bits of psychology facts just to practice and play with the app. So I posted this one TikTok which was let's talk about grandiose narcissism. This is what it looks like. This is a kind of typical science. I went from one hundred and fifty TikTok followers to fifteen thousand. That grandiose narcissism video had almost a million views and the comments went within a space of weeks, and I thought, this is astonished. Well thanks, that's just wild to hear. I mean, when I started doing research on this, people could even say the word. It's very interesting that it's just well it is.

3:14 It is huge, and I do think that the word is banded around and people do perhaps misuse it, and I thought, well, if I'm going to contribute to the conversation, I want to be contributing with facts. When I studied psychology, first of all, in the early nineteen nineties, I don't think we even really covered this topic. So it would be fair to say that the research has really thanks largely to you, like it's really exploded in the last decade. Well I would. I wouldn't say just thanks to me, but thanks to a lot of people in the last twenty years. Yeah, it's absolutely exploded. And what's been interesting is that this, like you said, that vulnerable grandiose distinction.

3:58 A lot of that's what was opping the field was theoretically people just didn't know what to talk about it. They were kind of stuck because the clinicians were really interested in this more vulnerable presentation, and everybody else with bad relationships and bad political leaders was interested in the grandiose and they kept trying to put them together and they couldn't do it. So I think once we sorted that out, then the field just took off because people knew what they were talking about. So let's start for listeners now with that distinction. So can you explain to us Keith, like, what is the definition of, for example, grandiose narcissist versus a vulnerable narcissist, which a lot of people have still not ever heard that definition. So I think that's a good place to start.

4:39 Yeah, generally with narcissism, we're talking about some sort of self importance and maybe a sense of entitlement or I deserve special treatment, I deserve people to pay attention to me. I'm better than people, I'm superior to people. So that's sort of something that's consistent with narcissism, but that gets presented in a couple of different ways, and these are two very different types of people. Really. One is you take that and you add a lot of what we call extraversion or energy, charisma, excitement, charm, maybe drive or ambition, and what you end up with is what you think of your's your stereotypical hard surgeon or politician or kind of Hollywood actor who's maybe thinks are better than you, but they're also charming and driven and charismatic and kind of likable and you kind of don't mind them around if they're a fighter pilot, you know, if they're doing a good job. And so that's the narcissism most of us are familiar with. We're talking about it's kind of the arrogant guy we know or gal we know. The other form is you take that same self importance, but rather than being sort of assertive and aggressive, you're actually a little insecure. You have a little bit low self esteem.

5:59 You're like, I'm than everybody else, but I kind of a little bit meek, and I'm a little bit scared. And when you have that combination of superiority but also this kind of fear about engaging with the world, you end up being depressed or anxious or I feel isolated because no one appreciates your genius, no one sees you. You end up with an active fantasy life. And so folks with this more vulnerable, sensitive form of narcissism end up in therapy more so they're more likely to be in psychotherapy for depression or things. And then people start to dig in and go, oh, you're kind of self important underneath all that depression, you know, and that's the vulnerability.

6:41 The other way to think about it is narcissism can be really offensive or defensive in the sense that, hey, I want everyone to think I'm a big deal. I can run out and try to get on TV or get on a podcast, or get my name out there and get attention. And so that's sort of a very approach or a detension seeking way, and that's what you see with grandiose narcissism. Well you see with vulnerable narcissism is defensiveness where they're not going to say anything. But if you criticize somebody who's really vulnerable narcissist, they get angry, really reactive, kind of fly off the handle a little bit. So they're much more focused on defending that little sense of self they have, whereas the grandiose folks they're very confident.

7:24 They just want more attention just to reinforce their confidence. So they're very different presentations, but deep down it's kind of what they share is, yeah, I'm better than you and I deserve special treatment. Yeah right, So is it possible then? And this came up in the questions on some of my videos do people swing? Because the way I had described it, and I think I've probably got this from your book, was that you will see the grandiose narcissist if they are attacked or confronted, they don't handle criticism very well, and they can fly into a rage, and people in relationships with often talk about that narcissistic kind of rage as opposed to the vulnerable narcissism who doesn't really have it in them for the confrontation. They're a little bit shaky self esteem, so they'll be more passive aggressive or but.

8:08 That you get the anger. You can get this passive aggressive anger, but you don't get the what you'll see with with grandiose narcissism, you'll see the more physical attacks because they're confident, they're assertive, and they're willing to do that. With vulnerability, you don't see that as much. But what you're I think what you're getting at is some people share both. I mean, some people have a lot of grandiosity and vulnerability. It's not they're just different forms. But some people have both of these things. And really that's kind of the scariest combination you can have, because somebody is really active but also really insecure underneath, so that they can be tripped up or destabilized with threats.

8:51 Yeah, right, that's that's good to know. That was my question about whether they kind of can be both or whether they swim. Between and the vacillation question is really interesting as well. So what you'll see is people, I mean people in general have fantasies about being grandios. This isn't a bad thing. I'm not like, oh my god, you know I kind of I wanted to be a princess or I wanted to be famous. Yeah, that's normal, and people have these these fantasies. But but what you see with vulnerability is a little more of these, you know, grandiose fantasies that kind of pop up more with grandiose narcissism. I'm sort of thinking through the most recent studies I can think of.

9:34 With grandiose narcissism, you see some swing, but not as much, mostly because you're engaged with the world more so, you're just much more engaged if you're more grandios, so your your reality testing is more and you kind of you can kind of stabilize. But with vulnerability, you just have those grandiose fantasies and then this kind of like oh I'm a terrible person, and then some grandios. So you see more of that swinging back and forth. Okay, and how does a narcissism become created? Is this biological? Is it temperament? Is it a history of trauma. You know, what makes somebody a narcissist or is there a simple answer or is it a combination of fact.

10:14 Well, it's definitely a combination of factors. There's never simple answers in these things. What we find with most personality is, I don't know, forty percent or something's heritable, maybe fifty, maybe thirty eight. Something somewhere around there is heritable, meaning it's genetic, likely coming from your parents. And so most of what we are is kind of wired into us to start with. That's the biggest piece we can detect. And that's just the way it is. That's a hard pill to swallow for most people. But once you're a parent and you have a few different kids and you realize, my goodness, my kids are so different and I try to treat them in the same way, and my wife try to treat them the same way, but they're just different people. Well, that's that hardwire and we have. So that's a big piece parenting. The way your parents treat you matter, and we see some differences with grandiose and vulnerable narcissism. With grandiose narcissism, you see the parents are more likely to put the kids on a pedestal to treat the kids like they're special. With vulnerable narcissism, you're more likely to see that more cold abuse of parenting that you see with a lot more disorders. But in terms of parenting, you're talking maybe ten to twenty percent is predicted by parenting. It's just not that much what you say to parents. Like parents, it's really important as a parent to love and support your child, but you just don't have that much power shifting their personality. So there's some that you see, but not as much as

11:46 most people think. And the rest is what we call non shared environment. It's just luck. So it's the kids you end up hanging out with, it's the pop music you listen to, it's the Instagram you're following, whatever. This social context is kind of mixed with your general personality, mixed with how your parent and you blend that together and you end up with more or less narcissism, the same way you end up with any sort of personality combination. Yeah, I think you said something really interesting before, Keith, Like, you know, everybody has this fantasies. You know, you wanted to be a princess, and. I think this is really important because people will listen and go, oh God, look, am I a narcissist? How do we make the distinction between Like, narcissistic personality traits exist on a spectrum, Where is the line that turns something into a narcissistic personality disorder?

12:40 How do we make that distinction? So there's a couple I think there's a couple lines. One First, is narcissism's normal? Now everybody's got some, like you're saying, it's a continuum. One question, one sort of test I ask ask people as well. Is your narcissism interfering with your ability you have relationships? So? Is your ego so overpowering that you can't find loving relationships with your family, with friends, with a romantic partner. So just my general question to people is if your narcissism's interfering with that, with that love part of your life, that might be an issue to consider. Like, hey, maybe this is an ideal, but that doesn't mean it's a clinical disorder.

13:23 It's just that's where I sort of want people or suggest people maybe look for problems with narcissism. If you think you're a big deal, but you get along with people and everyone likes you and you love your family. It's like, great, keep thinking you're a big deal. It's fine. It's not going to earn anything. So what happens when narcissism becomes a disorder is it becomes extreme and it becomes inflexible. So this is what happens with personality. Like, my ego is so big that I can't stop it for a moment, even if I have to make this important decision. It's like, Keith, all you have to do is just don't be an arrogant jerk just for a minute. Just get the deal signed and everything's done. I'm like, Nope, I've got to put my ego out there because I matter.

14:09 When your ego starts really interfering with your life, you can't turn it up and down. Clinically, you can be diagnosed is having a disorder, and this is something that a trained clinicians should do. It's not something you should do on TikTok. It's not something I do because I'm a research psychologist. I'm not a clinictical psychologist. I don't diagnose people with narcissism. But what you would look at is you look at certain traits. Hey, your need for admiration, your need to hang out with the cool kids, your need to take credit for all the good things and blame people, your envy you have for people. Those things are leading to severe problems, clinically significant problems in your life in a couple areas like your relationships, like your work, and if that happens, you can be diagnosed as having a personality disorder. But it's extreme. I mean that's an extreme condition. Yeah.

14:59 I think that's a point that's really worth making, the extreme, the extremeness of it. Because that comment came up a lot like isn't this everybody? Isn't this? You know? Am I a narcissist? Tell me, Keith? Can people do people self identify as narcissists or do most narcissists not really have a clue that they're a narcissist? Yeah? Well, people who are a narcissistic kind of know it. I mean that's how the tests work. I mean they're they're just like, you know, I'm you know, I think I'm better looking than other people, and I wish someone would write my biography and people say, yeah, so it's not like it's a mystery. Oh my goodness, I can't believe it. You know, I wanted to be famous, and I think I'm hot, and I love having short term relationships and I love getting my new Rolex and my Mercedes.

15:46 But I didn't know I had an ego, so it's not surprising to people. But I think there might be a lack of awareness of how it affects your life. So people can be narcissistic. They're like, yeah, I've gotten an ego, but they might not see it as much. Although in the research that we've done recently, I should always say that graduate students have done, not me, but we've looked at this and people who are narcissistic do see some awareness that it costs them interpersonally, that having that kind of ego. It might be fine at work, it might be fine when you're out partying socializing, but it really costs you in terms of having committed close interpersonal relationships. And there is awareness that people have. It's not that their people are totally clueless or narcissistic. They see a cost to it. It might be worth the cost because the ego is more important, but there they're not blind to a cost.

16:44 Is it fair to say though that typically my experience, I guess and just talking to people and on social mad not just TikTok, but on Instagram and other places where and people in my life have've had relationships with narcissists. Is it fair say that the narcissist is usually not the one that turns up to be assessed, but the problems that have that are a result of somebody's narcissism are often for the people in their lives, for their partner, for their kids, for their workmates. The narcissist isn't unless they're the vulnerable with the anxiety depression. The narcissist is having a pretty good time most of the time. Yeah, one hundred percent. Sometimes I describe it to people.

17:24 I mean, so what just to reinforce what you're saying, is that often, you know, with disorders, you go, well, somebody they're suffering going on, that's why a disorder. And most of the time the person suffering is the person with the disorder. You know, you're depressed, You're like, I'm depressed, You're you know, you're you're paranoid. You're like, oh, I'm paranoid. So you're suffering. In the case of narcissism, you're not necessarily the one suffering. Often it's the people around you. It's your spouse, as your kids, there are your coworkers. They're the ones who are suffering and you're feeling pretty good. The only other well, there might be others, but one other disorder class. It's similar to this as addictions. What people can go through life with sort of addictions that they feel good, but they end up causing a lot of problems to the world around them. Alcohol abuse are the drug abuse. So narcissism functions that way, and that's really important. So somebody's like, yeah, I'm really narcissistic, My life's just fine. You look around and often there's just a trail of wreckage behind somebody. It's they've damaged relationships, they've damaged work relationships, and so you'll just see this trail.

18:34 I always say, it's like a tornado going through. So no matter what somebody says is narcissistic, if you look at the history, you should see damage. If you don't see damage, they're probably not that bad a person. So statistically, a certain percentage of the population has a narcissistic personality disorder. I forget, and maybe it's five percent or something. How accurate and reliable. Is that given that the narcissists aren't showing up to be assisted, and we actually because the SAME's I'm talking to people that it's rough out there. Yeah, so when you look at the estimates, it's hard because what you need are national level surveys and it's hard to get those. The one that we relied aren't relied on for a lot of the data. When they first analyzed it, came up with an estimate of something I think it was more like six or seven percent for NPD, So those numbers were really high. Other people came back and said, well, that's people reporting the symptoms, but it's not they're not reporting actual impairment. And when you do that, you get something more like one or two percent. So I think the number I go with now is that maybe at any one point in time of the population, the rate of narcissistic personality disorder full blown clinical disorder something like one or two percent, so one out of one hundred and two out of one hundred, which which is less than most people would think because they're looking on the internet going my god.

20:03 It's everybody, it's everywhere exactly, you know. So so I think the prevalence of the disorder is relatively low. I think we know what we know from the research that people who are narcissistic have more connections and more active on social media. So you certainly when you turn on your social media, what that means is that the constellation of personality shining back to you is more narcissistic than the one shining out because they're the one putting out the content and they're the one connecting. So that changes how we perceive the world. And also, there are a lot of people are narcissistic but aren't at a level where it's a clinical disorder, where they're just a kind of a tool, kind of a jerk, kind of an arrogant person. But there may be a little bit entertaining. They're not doing that much damage and people don't mind having around for a few pints or whatever, and so you see a lot of it, but that's not full clinical, it's just kind of annoying.

20:59 Yeah, I got cha. So when we talk about and you know your terminology and I probably have a similar I probably present similarly when I talk about narcissism, you know, kind of a tool, kind of a jerk, kind of this kind of that, and then we have people saying, well, you know, can't we just try to understand them and have some compassion for them. What's your response to that. I would like to have compassion for everybody. I don't have any problem having compassion with people. And I think there's a couple challenges. One is when people say let's have some compassion, what they mean is I'm going to change somebody. I'm going to fix somebody because I'm going to figure out what's wrong. And what I usually say to that is I do think people who are narcissistic can change. I mean, do you talk to clinical clinical people who work with them all the time, and if somebody is very motivated on their own, they can change. However, you are not a clinic clinician or a pychiatrist, and you're not motivated, you can't motivate the person to change, So you have no prayer of changing somebody. So just let it go because you're not going to do it.

22:09 And I say that with love. The other thing is when people hurt us, we'd like to think that they're going to feel bad or something, and so deep down they're going to it's and a lot of times, people that are kind of psychopathic and narcissistic, they just don't have that many feelings and they hurt us and they just keep going. So but it might do I have compassion? Sure? I mean it's it's a you live a selfish life, you die a selfish life, and nobody it's great to live selfishly diye selfishly horrendous. You die alone with no love. Can't imagine anything worse than that. That's what you're signing up for. If you want to do that, great, It's just it's not necessarily what I would do.

22:49 I think you hit the nail on the head there where you said that that is often motivated, motivated by this like I can change this person, and that is And that was probably one of my next questions was do they change? And you know is? And I think you've answered that question. Yeah no, But I do want to say I think clinically, if somebody out there is listening, Gwen, you know I'm really narcissistic. I want to be a better person. I say, amen, go do it. There's nothing stopping you from doing it except yourself. Because what all the data show is the challenges with narcissism and change in psychotherapy is staying in therapy. If you can stand in therapy, it seems to be reasonably effective.

23:31 I hope that you're enjoying this conversation and realizing the benefits of positivity in your own life. If you are enjoying. The show, please be sure to like and subscribe so that you get notified when you apps drop and head on over to Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen and leave us a rating and review. So keith it does turn out, And the vast majority of people who are out there and googling and looking up YouTube videos and looking at my TikTok video, whoever's you know, content around narcissism are the people who are on the receiving end of the narcissistic behaviors, and so they're the ones who often have the questions.

24:12 They're the ones who are seeking. Help and knowing what we do and understanding narcissism as we do. Now, what would be your advice to somebody who finds themselves in a relationship with a narcissist given what you've just said about they're not going to change like you do. Have some good advice about how you can effectively manage these people. Yeah, So the challenge is how committed is this relationship? If you're wired in with somebody and you're invest heavily invested, and you have children and you want to make this work, and this person isn't abusive, they're just a little bit of a bore, that's one thing. And maybe there's ways you want to stick with it, and you start with therapy and I have some like in the book, I have some ideas, but you know, there's things you do and try to make it work. Great if you're not invested in the relationship and you're going, you know what, this person's narcissistic, but I could maybe it will work out.

25:08 If it were my own child, I would say, get out as fast as you can. I don't tell people what to do, so, but that's what I would tell my daughter. Yeah, because there's there's very little reason for someone who is very ego focused to change, just there's not motivation to do it. And what you're hoping in a relationship is as you become more close, you're going to become emotionally intimate. You're going to get to know the person, You're going to share vulnerabilities, you're going to become tight emotionally, and that's not going to happen with somebody's narcissistic. So if that's something you want in a relationship, you're just not going to get it. If you're shallow and wants somebody to go to Vegas with, have at it.

25:51 God bless you, you know, But but generally I just would I would just bail. Do you reckon narcissists? When you just made that comment about Vegas? I was thinking, I wonder a narcissist drawn to each other? Do you think you see a little bit of that? And you know, in a lot of the research we did on undergrads, you see a little bit of what we call them awfully, that's the fancy way of seeing. Light goes with like. So you do see a little bit of a correlation in relationships with narcissism. And it makes sense. It's people, you know, especially with grandiases, people a little shallow, extroverted, They kind of like each other. I think the real problem with the narcissistic relationship happens when you have the one partner who's very narcissistic, very charming, charismatic, but not that interested in emotional intimacy. And the other partner who signed up for the whole package. They want the charisma and the energy, but they also want the emotional intimacy, and they end up getting hurt in those relationships because there's this real mismatch of motives and what to expect.

26:54 And I hear that a lot too. Like these people who are they really end up quite broken because they have invested years in a relationship trying to make it work. And what about the term gaslighting, So that's often used in reference to narcissists, this idea where they make you feel like you're the one with the problem, that you're crazy. Can you talk about that? Yes, I can. I mean the term gaslight is it's a term people are using. It comes to an old movie where that the protagonists would change the lights and say, like, the lights aren't changed, but they were down, and you go crazy. So it's a way of making somebody become start to question their own sense or contact with reality.

27:37 And if you can do that to somebody, if you can effectively gaslight them or make them think they don't know what's real, they're very easy to manipulate. So you can see why people who are narcissistic or psychopathic would use a strategy like this. The challenge for me as a researcher is there's no research on narcissism and gaslighting. Per se a student who kind of figured out the comtruck, but it just hasn't been done. We've looked at things like that are similar, like narcissism and game plane, like showing commitment, taking commitment away, and you do find that. So my guess is you're going to find this narcissism gas lighting, and it's about power and control against something makes you unstable. The other thing they'll do in a relationship is show less commitment. I'm not as interested in you, You're more interested in me. Well, the least interested person in the relationship always has the power, So if the narcissists can kind of pull interest from you, then you're always giving in and you end up losing power. So a lot of this is just a power game.

28:37 Yeah, it does seem like that, and you know, there's a lot of the terminology that flies around on the internet gas lighting. Another one is future faking, like promising what you want in the future in order to get what they want in the present, which is just manipulation. It's really Yeah. Yeah, I've heard love bombing a lot too, and that's another one we haven't studied, but that's basically being sort of of, you know, very focused on you at the beginning of relationship and then becoming less focused later on. And another point you brought up it's really interesting is the damage you see with narcissistic relationships happens years after the relationship ends. And that's something that really struck me. You know, years ago when I started studying this was like, my goodness, these relationships end, but the person still gets damaged because they're trying to figure it out, like what happened? What did I do wrong? How was it so stupid? And it's a tricky one because I tell people like, you're not stupid people who are narcissistic.

29:38 I mean, these grandios narcissists are attractive. They're attractive people. You're not stupid. You're normal if you're attracted to somebody like this. You're normal to get in a relationship like this, and you're normal to question it. You've just got to let it go. You know, it just comes down to the old you know, you get shot with the arrow, you just pull it out instead. Of spending a bunch of time thinking who shot it? And I am what they did? You just see a Buddhist parable. Just I love that Buddhist parable. That's very hard for people. I'm really glad that you made that point because I've said the same thing to people as well, like, you're not stupid, You've just you've been played. And people are highly skilled manipulators. And that's not on you. Because people do they really question themselves and what's wrong with me?

30:22 Do I need therapy? Because why was I drawn to this person in the first place? And they just go around and around. I fall for a narcissist all the time. I love it. I just listen to somebody super confident, charming, charismatic. I'm like, just dialed in. I'm really extroverted. I'm a total idiot. I mean it just it happens. I mean, just don't hate yourself for it. Just move on. I think the other really good point that you make, Keith is that because I think that there are some very unlikable characters that we all pin you know, we see them a mile away. You know, we can talk about Donald Trump for example, and oh no, and they're horrible and they're repugnant and they're they're so unlikable. But most grandiose narcissists are actually very likable, right. I think that people are they expect these people to be awful and repulsive.

31:15 And they're charming and they're charismatic. No, and the and the truth is there's always half the people love you, meaning with every you know, Donald Trump has half the people love him. He does. There's other leaders who have have to do. People have the people hate and say these are the most repulsive people on earth, and the other half love them. That is true of almost all these narcissistic leaders. They're polarizing figures, that's true. And half the people say, this person is my fighter, and so what if they got an ego, there are my team, and the other people like, this person is a horrible egomaniac freak. And it's just the nature of political leadership that we just get sucked into these people over and over and over and the other it's like you're in a world bad relationship and everyone sees it and you're like, but it's love. You know.

32:04 It's the same kind of process where you people who aren't in the forest field to just go we see with cult leaders, people aren't in the forest field like you're insane, but people in the forest field of the leader just they just get real dumb again. But we've all done it, we've all fallen, all done it, good leaders. We've all done it. But the other, I mean, the other thing that I hear a lot is like once full for a narcissist. Once and they spot those character traits. A mile away. Now I don't know almost a bit. They become overly cautious, and I guess that's that potentially is a problem too, that you start spotting everybody, becoming so vigilant and so wary that you don't trust anybody again because you don't trust people.

32:47 Yeah, well, I think it's totally natural that if you have somebody who you love abuse your trust, that you become much more skeptical of people and you start looking for for threats. And if you start looking for threats, obviously going to find threats. So it's a challenge because every time, especially in romantic relationships and our shared culture, they're not we don't have set relationships, they're not to arrange marriages. They're always a risk. I mean, there's always a risk. So that's just you're either in that you're either in the game getting smashed around trying to do it, or you're not in the game. But it's always going to be a risk, you know, I always but I always say, look at somebody's history, look at their history.

33:32 Good advice, Keith. I know that you've done some research and you put a book out with Gene twenty is it Jeane. Twein, Yeah, twy. Twenty, right, I've saw her speak actually when around the time that the book came out, and so it was all about the narcissist narcissism epidemic, and it my recollection is that it really focused on the rise of narcissism in our society and relationship to social media. Can you talk a little bit. About that, Well, I would say it wasn't it wasn't all social media really because in nine yeah, a lot of the focus was not easy money, believe it or not.

34:15 So we wrote that book looking at the cultural changes going from the you know, fifties, sixties, eighties into right into the Great Financial Crisis. So when we wrote it, it was sort of the peak of the Paris Hilton selfie. But material is kind of Instagram culture. That's right where we were hitting. And we started seeing these correlations with social media and narcissism. And you know, I thought, at the time, or at least I think I thought that that social media was really elevating narcissism socially. That's what was going on. Since that we had the Great Financial Crisis, which didn't hit Australia as bad as the US, but just wiped us out, and we saw narcissism start to shift.

35:07 We saw people become less sort of overtly materialistic and much more judgmental about everybody else. We saw people become less grandiose and maybe more vulnerable, but equally angry. So it looked to me it looks like in the data that narcissism at least dropped from that peak, and it sort of dropped down. In twenty thirteen, we started seeing this growth of depression, especially in young girls, which seemed like maybe linked to social media at least in part because of the social comparison process and the fear missing out and the mean girls and those kind of things. So I don't think there's a neat one to one.

35:47 You know, social media made everybody narcissistic. I think it had these effects that changed over time. And I also think it depends on social media because we can run into how people started running from one to the other. So there we are. I think we've got a lot of narcissism, but I think the normal, the general person you meet down the street at the corner store, is at pretty decent human being. But we're surrounded by in a society where you can broadcast yourself and brand yourself and become anything you want. And we've also broken down a lot of the social norms become very individualistic and atomized, and so we see this narcissism kind of taken over everything like a little bit of a plague. And there you have it.

36:27 I've got a question, Keith. For parents, something comes up a lot is how do I stop my child from becoming a total narcissis We see our kids staring at their phones. And posting on social media and posting the selfies. And everybody's like, I don't want but how do I stop my kid from becoming that narcissistic jerk? Yeah, and most of your kids aren't, so don't worry about it. But my parents have asked me this so much. They up I've come up with advice which is spelled CPR so you can remember it. But I think this is actually reasonable advice because the thing to do is, like, you know, you have a young kid that's like dad on the best. You're like, no, you're not, You're a loser like the rest of his kid. You know, kids, it's normal for kids to be sort of full of themselves.

37:11 It's part of a development. But what I suggest is against CPR. First is focus on compassion. Make sure that your kids are reinforced your kids being compassionate, loving, caring. And if you're a compassionate, truly compassionate person, you can't be that narcissistic. It just won't do that much damage. The best thing to do as a parent, too, is demonstrate practice what you preach, so your kids learn from you as a model. Don't just try to tell them what to do and be a jerk yourself. The second thing, and this is what most people don't think about, is reinforcing passion. So what you can do is you can engage in something you absolutely love. You can get a lot of self esteem and a sense of efficacy and self cast confidence from doing this thing, and you can draw people to you and you can do it out of passion. So you know, with an Australian audience, I think of surfing, but you know, surfing you can do out of passion. You feel love, You get a huge amount of self confidence from surfing, and eventually you will draw people to you and you can build a really very healthy ego without becoming an egomaniac. Because's not about being better and somebody. It's just loving what you do.

38:29 So focus on passionate activities and then finally a sense of responsibility. That's the r piece. It's just taking responsibility for when you mess up. Most people are a narcissistic like to take responsibility for good things. But when you learn to say, hey I screwed up and I'm going to make it right, and just practice that over and over. First of all, it gives you a great sense of power because you're like, yeah, I can fail and get up and keep going. It's okay. So it's really a powerful thing to learn. But also you don't become air again because you're like, yeah, I fail sometimes that's okay, who does it? You know? So again, compassion, passion, responsibility, you can focus on those things. Your kids can still think they're wonderful and smart and beautiful and all those great things, but it's not going to get out of hand and turn into some sort of ego maniacal or junior narcissist.

39:23 I think that's really great advice. When we talk about narcissism, sometimes what comes up is explain to me, Like you refer to narcissism and sociopathy a couple of times together in our conversation. What is the distinction between narcissism, like a narcist and a sociopath. Yeah, I actually said psychopathy, which just sorry, confused thing. No, just to confuse it even more because people will say sociopaths, psychopath you know, narcissists. So there's a group of trade and what they share is antagonism, which is sort of core of like I'm mean, I'm a little bit mean, I'm a little bit callous, I'm a little bit sense I'm a little bit better than you, and so that that sense of antagonism. Sometimes we talk about like the dark triad. Well when they say dark, it really means antagonistic, and so traits that share that are things like narcissism, which is what we've been talking about psychopathy, which looks like narcissism. But psychopathy is not so much about hey, I need the attention, I need everyone to see how cool I'm doing. It's more about the manipulativeness and power and control. It's not so much about you know, looking good doing it. It's not being an entertainer. It's about being a predator. But they're related. Sociopathy is a term that comes out of sociology, but it's very similar to sort of psychopathy. Basically being a bad person, similar to

40:57 antisocial personality, and what that share is the same sort of antagonism, but also some impulsivity. So people are more anti social tend to be like they're like impulsive, so they like steal stuff, they do bad things. People in narcissistic aren't necessarily impulsive. They'll get in trouble, but it will be over a long period of time. They're not doing you know, little petty crimes necessarily. So it's there's a whole there's a whole spectrum of traits we talk about. They'd all have this core of antagonism, but probably the two biggest that people talk about a narcissism, which has to do with the attention seeking and psychopathy, which more has to do with control and manipulation. But again, their cousin traits similar.

41:44 Did they both share the Does that antagonism piece creates that lack of empathy. Yeah, that's kind of the core. That's where that lack of empathy sits, right in that core of antagonisms. I'm better than you, I'm callous about your feelings. I'm not really empathetic. The challenge with people who are narcissistic is, yeah, I can understand your feelings. It's not like I can't feel anything or I can't empathize, Like, yeah, I know how you're feeling. That's how come I can manipulate you. So it's a certain kind of lack of empathy. It's more a lack of emotional empathy rather than cognitive empathy, manipulativeness and a sense of entitlement. I deserve special treatment, I deserve more things. That life should be better for me than it should be for most people. And that's something you see with narcisism man tychopathy.

42:33 Yeah, and my very last question, Keith, is and this goes back to like when I was studying psychology and I did my undergraduate degree. Like I said, early nineties, I had a big long breaker, went back and did clinical like more like two thousands, and in that time they seemed to be the shift where when I first learned about narcissism, at whatever point that was, it was narcissism is all just a mask for insecurity. It's like these people who are deeply insecure and they present this image of being so overly confident in this entitlement because they're deep down they're really insecure. And then they said, no, that's actually not right. Some of these people who are narcissistic, they genuinely think they're better than you. There is no mask for insecurity here, like they really genuinely have that sense of entitlement.

43:20 Are both true? Is it that one is more grandiose, one's more vulnerable? Like how do you what's the answer to that question? Yeah, so that's your timing is right. And when I started doing this, we were looking at sometimes we call this the mask model. Sometimes I'd call this the Tutsi pop model, because we have this tutsipop and you, I don't know if you have them down there. It's like it's basically like it's basically a lollipop that's sort of soft on the inside with the tutil and then hard candy shell. So sometimes you sort of sort of like card on the outside, soft on the inside. Sometimes we call it the donut model, so it's sort of grandiose in the outside with the hole in the middle. And so we've looked at that. We've looked for that in different ways. We've tried to look at people as like implicit, like, well, deep down quickly, how quickly do you think good things are associated with you? We've asked people, do you feel like you're wearing a mask or do you not feel like you're wearing a mask? That. We've tried other sort of ways of getting at that, and you don't really find that. What you seem to see is, like you said, these grandiose folks, maybe they're a seven and they think they're a nine, so they're inflating who they are, but they're certainly deep down not a three. You know, and say Donald Trump doesn't look in the mirror and go, God, you are the most lowsome three person in the world.

44:47 He's like, you're a freaking winner, and he's maybe I got to pump myself up from a nine to a ten. The vulnerable folks famerly have sort of low self esteem. But it's true on the outside too. It's not like they're acting confident and you wouldn't know they're a little bit insecure too. So the model, I think what happened was people said, well, there's this vulnerable narsism, this grandiose narcissism. How do we make this so it's all one model. Well, maybe the grandiose people are just grandiose on top of a vulnerable core, and the energy of the grandiosity is actually the vulnerability. I mean, maybe that happens sometimes. I mean you do see people that are kind of weak that go out there and you know, I'm going to really push myself to be confident. But I don't think that is the basic structure of narcissism. I think it's much simpler than that.

45:40 Keith, this has been fascinating for me. I so appreciate your time and your generosity. Thanks for being on the Crepit A happy podcast. Oh my pleasure, and you got me fired up even this late at night. It was fun to talk about narcissism. So thanks. That's it is such a topic. If you have any questions, about naism or narcissist Please do. Send them in. I will do my best to answer what I can over on TikTok, or we may be able to get Keith to come back for a part two if you're interested in Keith's books. The first one he wrote was When You Love a Man who Loves Himself? How to deal with the one my relationship back in two thousand and five. Like I said, in two thousand and nine, he co wrote The Narcissism Epidemic, Living in the Age of Entitlement, and his most recent book, The New Science of Narism, Understanding one of the greatest psychological challenges of our time and What you Can Do about It. That one came out in September twenty twenty. Or put links to all of those books in the show notes.

46:39 Now. You may have heard, if you follow me on social media or if you are on my email list, that I am about to pack up and relocate to London in the UK. My family and I are heading over there to live for the next few years. So I'll be taking a little break from recording new episodes of Crappy to Happy just for a little while. There is an enormous back catalog for you to go through that will fill your time until I come back. Please do hit the subscribe button so that you are the first to know when new episodes are released. Because there will be brand new episodes. The Crappy to Happy podcast will continue bigger and better from London in the UK. I promise you it will just be a short break until then. Thank you so much for listening. If you like the podcast, please share with your friends, tell them about it, leave us a rating and review, and I cannot wait to catch you in the next episode of Crappy to Happy.

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