Parents who think their children are “more special than other children” or “deserve something extra in life” might end up having a narcissist instead of the God’s gift they thought in the beginning.
In a study that looked for the origins of narcissism, researchers surveyed parents and their children to see if they could identify which factors led children to have inflated views of themselves. The results pointed to the parents who “overvalued” their children, the Ohio State University reports.
“Children believe it when their parents tell them that they are more special than others. That may not be good for them or for society,” said Brad Bushman, co-author of the study and professor of communication and psychology at The Ohio State University.
According to the researchers, parents with the best of intentions may overvalue their children, thinking this will boost their self-esteem.
“Rather than raising self-esteem, overvaluing practices may inadvertently raise levels of narcissism,” explained lead author Eddie Brummelman, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Amsterdam.
The study, which is the first to show how narcissism develops in time, involved 565 children in the Netherlands who were 7 to 11 years old when the study began, and their parents. Togheter, they completed surveys four times, each six months apart. Parental overvaluation was then measured with a scale that asked how much they agreed with statements such as “My child is a great example for other children to follow.”
Researchers also measured children for levels of both narcissism and self-esteem because, as they say, narcissism is not just “self-esteem on steroids”. The findings actually show that children with high self-esteem, rather than seeing themselves as more special than others, agreed with statements that suggested they were happy with themselves as a person and liked the kind of person they were.
“People with high self-esteem think they’re as good as others, whereas narcissists think they’re better than others,” Bushman said.
As the study found, self-esteem and narcissism develop in different ways. While parental overvaluation was associated with higher levels of child narcissism, it was not associated with more self-esteem. In contrast, parents who showed emotional warmth did have children with higher self-esteem, so parental warmth is not associated with narcissism.