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Wednesday, March 7, 2007
Are young people growing more self-absorbed?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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She took offense to the question, but I had to ask.
After all, its what drew me to Georgia Gwinnett College , the self-proclaimed “campus of tomorrow.”
“Are you narcissistic?, I asked Sara Francis Spencer, 19, a freshman at Georgia Perimeter College, which has a campus location at GGC.
“I’m not self-absorbed at all,” said Sara, a 2005 South Gwinnett High grad and aspiring nurse.
“Wow. That really bothers me.”
A new study conducted by five psychologists has found that today’s college students — Generation Y — are in love. With themselves. They live life with a sense of entitlement and self-absorption that outpaces their predecessors, that makes Paris Hilton appear humble.
According to the study, 30 percent more college students showed “elevated narcissism” last year than in 1982. In that 25-year time span, researchers posed a series of personality questions to more than 16,000 students.
On Wednesday, the Badie Tour went looking for a few narcissists at GGC. I’d hope to find droves of them enjoying a beautiful Georgia day, smug and self-indulgent, and chanting:
“I am special. I’m perfect. I know it.”
Out of several students I talked to in Building A, all but one reacted the way Sara did — with disbelief that they had been labeled so darkly, dismissed as selfish.
“That’s terrible,” said Vanessa Giles , 22, a Georgia Perimeter coed and early childhood education major.
And in her opinion, untrue.
“Young people in general get a bad rap,” Giles of Monroe told me. “I’m working for all this stuff, paying for my classes and everything, and most of the people I know are doing the same thing. That’s not being self-absorbed. We just want to better ourselves.”
Chad Chapel , 22, who just earned his associate degree from Georgia Perimeter, said there’s some reality to the data. He said college students do think they’re special. “Obviously, it’s not every student,” said Chapel, a 2002 Dacula High grad who plans to study accounting at Georgia State.
“But I would say it’s a majority of them. I’m guilty of it myself. There are lots of cliques. Nobody mingles.”
Granted, my random sampling doesn’t hold water when compared to academic research. The five professors who conducted the study talked to 16,475 students. Then they apparently used the results as a template that was applied to the college nation.
I’m always leery of poll and surveys, especially when results are presented in black and white, with no nuance. Still, I’d imagine there’s some truth, somewhere, in the results of this college student personality survey.
But if our young people are growing more self-indulged, perhaps it’s time to conduct a companion study. Self-centeredness can’t fall too far from the tree.
Spencer , the aspiring nurse, thinks the survey provides a snapshot of a broad student population.
“The interviewers didn’t interview me or my friends,” she said.
Spencer plans to attend the University of Illinois, where she’ll play soccer. She’s heard that students at the Chicago school tend to have attitude.
“They’re stuck up,” she said. “That’s what I heard about them.”
Rick Badie’s column appears on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Contact him at 770-263-3875 or e-mail: rbadie@ajc.com.
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