Provoking Thought: Everyone Thinks They're Awesome

My buddy, Judge, has a little line he likes to use when we're out. A close paraphrase is:

People always think that they're awesome.

Generally, this is when we're being judgmental and critical of people that we see out in public. Because that's what we do. What's implied is that they're generally delusional. But maybe it's not just some sort of delusion that's driving this phenomena. Maybe it's just a cultural trend. It turns out that people are more narcissistic than they used to be. They're getting at being self-absorbed, thinking that you are at the center of the universe. And this article suggests that it's more of an issue now than in the past.

Of course, not everyone believes that. People have always thought that the latest young generation was going to lead to the downfall of civilization. And certainly, you can make the case that as people grow up, they develop a social conscience. Essentially, if you look at it as a 2 dimensional issue, with obligation on the horizontal axis and entitlement on the vertical axis, you start to see how things show up.

There are some funny quirks. Blacks and Latinos in the U.S. tend to be low in obligation and high in entitlement. This is generally a bad formula for success, since you end up disenchanted in your outcomes. Republicans and conservative Christians tend to be relatively low on entitlement, but high on obligation. My best guess is that there's some guilt-driven behavior that's associated with notions of original sin or other characteristics of the Christian faith. But I don't want to delve into these quirks this time.

There sort of an equity line that runs from the bottom left to the top right. Essentially, you end up with a relatively equal amount of obligation (what you should give) and entitlement (what you should get). There are some interesting findings with this stuff. Generally, people end up near the equity line. Women are a little further up and to the right (should give more, but should get back more) than men. Democrats are up on the top-right, as they believe that people should give a lot back to society, but that society should give back to the people. Makes sense. And libertarians are down on the bottom-left, as they don't believe that society owes them anything, and that they don't owe society anything.

Now what's interesting with the idea of being self-absorbed is that you can put it in this framework pretty well. You see that as people get older, they decide that they should contribute more to the world around them. Of course, people used to say that as you grow up, you go from being a liberal to a conservative. This would suggest that as people age, the go from the top-right to the top-left (essentially still feeling as obligated to contribute, but feel that they deserve less from the world around them). This sort of makes sense, if you match this up with typical income arcs. As people make more, they figure out that their stuff doesn't matter as much, so they are okay with giving more, despite not getting back more. Reminds me of Ecclesiastes. So, as a whole, society gets more than it has to give out. This helps the achievement of social goals. From an evolutionary psychology standpoint, you have to account for evolution of the group, as opposed to just the individual, if you want to have any hope of accounting for how human society has evolved. This account makes sense. If you only have individual improvement accounted for, you can't explain how social structures have evolved, and why social groups are often the driver of success.

What's a bit disturbing is that some research (also done by my buddy Judge) doesn't show this movement from the equity line, up to the top left as people age. He's finding that people sort of stay on that equity line as they age, and more from the bottom-left to the top-right. What's scary is that with this evolution, people simply believe that they are less at the center of the world, that the things around them matter more. That's good. However, if you still insist on equity (that your obligation and entitlement even out), then you never are able to see a real contribution to society.

My take: In the long term, this doesn't bode particularly well for society. Derive whatever you want from this :-)

-Chairman