Everybody can empathize with others, right? Well, everybody knows a narcissist, whether it’s your best friend, sister, brother, or favorite cousin at the family Thanksgiving dinner. You may be wondering what that has to do with anything, but in the following study, HE Ning explores the world of Narcissism, Empathy, and Altruism. To explore narcissism, empathy, and altruism, one has to first understand what they are. Narcissism is, simply put, loving yourself very very much and being extremely vain. Empathy is the capacity to feel others' emotions. Lastly, altruism is not having lots of concern for other people’s emotions and well-being. In this study, Ning compares and contrasts these three different feelings through two studies showing narcissists vs non-narcissists and their ability to experience narcissism, empathy, and altruism emotions. For the experiment that I’m going to share, Ning divides the 173 undergraduates into two groups. One of the narcissists and one of the non-narcissists using a quiz called the Narcissistic Personality Inventory quiz. After he separates them, he performed the first test. The first study consisted of another test called the Implicit Association Test. This is a test where a person could measure/detect the strength of one’s association between concepts in memory. This could be used to draw the emotion out of a person because they are forced to take emotions (concepts) from memories and can remember what those emotions felt like to show empathy. Pulling from that idea, the narcissists were expected to show low levels of empathy and weak gravitation towards altruism vs. the non-narcissists. The prediction was correct! Emotionally, the narcissists struggled to share the same feelings and feel what they were feeling, but cognitively, they could understand that they were feeling emotions This may feel irrelevant to our own lives, but it has a real connection to how we live our monotonous day-to-day lives. As stereotypical as this sounds, high school students, (including myself), can be extremely narcissistic. Stemming from that narcissism can come a lack of empathy. In our everyday lives, we need empathy to be kind to others to be happy and make other people happy. People always talk about being nice, but when one is narcissistic then they can’t step into others' shoes and understand how they are feeling because they are too interested in themselves. But then again, on the other side of this double-edged sword, when does self-confidence turn into narcissism and when does self-love turn into narcissism? And where can we draw that line? Can we draw that line or is it up to the person? These are all huge, extremely hard-to-answer questions. After reading and reflecting on this study, I was thinking about those boundaries and how I see then change and contradict every day. I was realizing how I didn’t truly understand what it means to “be a narcissist” and what it means to “have empathy”. I still struggle to find a balance between being a “narcissist” and just having confidence. Some days I have a lot of self-confidence and self-love, but other days I don’t feel as confident. On the days where I do have a lot of confidence, I slowly begin to doubt myself and my confidence because I worry if I seem conceited or vain. Also, thinking about this made me wonder how people saw me, if they saw me as a narcissist or if they saw me as an empathetic person. I worry about this because the study shows that narcissists can’t empathize with other people as well and I don’t want to be seen as a mean or unsympathetic person. Overall this was a great topic to think about and mull over because realizing how much it affects me and shapes how I act and live my life was a good reflector on myself and my attitude. I think everybody should take a little bit of time to reflect on themselves and their attitude. It was eye-opening! To see the full study: http://journhttp://journal.psych.ac.cn/xlxb/EN/10.3724/SP.J.1041.2016.00199 Ning, H. E. (n.d.). Self-love and other-love: Research on the relationships among narcissism, empathy and implicit altruism. Retrieved November 16, 2019, from http://journal.psych.ac.cn/xlxb/EN/10.3724/SP.J.1041.2016.00199. https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/beautiful-woman-looking-herself-mirror-portrait-268060799
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Ms. Carrigan's Psych ClassWe have been reading articles about psychological studies to inform the way we live our lives. Please explore, and we hope you learn a bit about the psychology in your life! Categories
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