Narcissism Decreases With Age But Childhood Narcissists Often Remain So As Adults

Eddie Gonzales Jr. – MessageToEagle.com – Narcissism generally decreases with age from childhood to adulthood.

However, individuals who are more narcissistic than their peers in childhood tend to maintain this trait into adulthood despite overall declines, according to a new study.

Narcissus painting by Caravaggio, depicting Narcissus gazing upon the water after falling in love with his own reflection. Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica  – Painting by Caravaggio (1571–1610) – Public Domain.

“These findings are significant as narcissism greatly affects people’s lives, especially those of their families and friends,” said lead author Ulrich Orth, PhD, from the University of Bern, Switzerland.
Orth’s team analyzed 51 longitudinal studies measuring changes in narcissism over time. The studies included 37, 247 participants aged 8-77, with a nearly even gender split. Most research was conducted in North America and Western Europe, with two studies in other regions in China and New Zealand. Some studies spanned decades.

Researchers categorized studies based on three types of narcissism:

• agentic (grandiosity, need for admiration),
• antagonistic (arrogance, entitlement, low empathy), and
• neurotic (emotional instability, hypersensitivity).

All three types of narcissism decreased from childhood to old age, with agentic narcissism showing a small decline and antagonistic and neurotic narcissism showing moderate declines.

However, individuals’ narcissism levels relative to their peers remained stable over time, meaning those more narcissistic than average as children stayed more narcissistic than average as adults.

“This held true over extended periods, indicating narcissism is a stable personality trait,” Orth said.

This study primarily analyzed data from the US and Western Europe. However,  Orth says that future research should explore narcissism across a wider range of cultures and investigate why it declines with age.

One theory proposes that adult social roles foster more mature personality traits, including reduced narcissism.

ARTICLE: “Development of Narcissism Across the Life Span: A Meta-Analytic Review of Longitudinal Studies,” by Ulrich Orth, PhD, and Samantha Krauss, PhD, University of Bern; and Mitja D. Back, PhD, University of Münster. Psychological Bulletin,published online July 11, 2024.

Written by Eddie Gonzales  Jr. – MessageToEagle.com Staff Writer