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3-108 - Recent Advances in the Study of Distortions in the Self / Narcissism

Sat, March 23, 12:45 to 2:15pm, Baltimore Convention Center, Floor: Level 3, Room 312

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Developmental research on the self-concept has increasingly turned its attention to self distortions. As a form of perception, the self is not a veridical manifestation of objective forms of experience. Instead it is a form of personal representation whose development derives from the intersection between actual experience and to at least two basic psychological motives, specifically self enhancement and defense (Thomaes et al, 2016; Bukowski et al, 2009). The first motive can account for the overly positive perception that most children have of their competencies; the second explains why some children have an especially distorted perception of self that can be seen a form of narcissism. The papers in the proposed symposium are representative of current developmental research on narcissism. The first paper uses data from a sample of older school-age children to assess the architecture of self-distortions. Their analysis shows that narcissism has a two factor structure, one for grandiosity and one for entitlement. The second paper assessed the association between grandiosity and prosocial behavior in a sample of young children. Their analysis showed that children who had an excessively positive view of themselves were vastly less generous than children who had a more moderated self-perceptions. This same finding was reported in the first study. The contextual/cultural analysis seen in the third study shows that the correlates of narcissism in older school-age children vary as a function the degree to which a context ascribes significance to the person or to the group.

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