Narcissists: Are We Surrounded?

10:31Craig Malkin:Okay, so this is the historical. Holy smokes. Just let me get my history face on.

10:38Kali Trzesniewski:That is W. Keith Campbell. He's a professor of psychology at the University of Georgia. But back then, he was a postdoc at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, along with another social scientist named Gene Twenge.

10:51Craig Malkin:We were in a basement office. They shoved three of us in there. We had a little bit of light that came through the Cleveland. window that we had cut into the basement and we'd talk in our swivel chairs.

11:04Kali Trzesniewski:And a lot of what they were talking about was how the culture seemed to be changing.

11:09Craig Malkin:We were in a period culturally in about 2000 that was just the most over-the-top self-promotional kind of culture you could imagine with the reality television show culture and other things along those lines. So it was just a very, it's kind of a very in-your-face cultural moment.

11:30Lee Hammock:Yeah, I mean, I remember it well, but I don't think we've moved away from the cultural moment of self-promotion.

11:38Kali Trzesniewski:I know, but I think right around then, a lot of people see that as an inflection point for certain things like reality TV. So Survivor debuted in 2000. Right around there is when American Idol started, America's Next Top Model. It's like fame, fame, fame, being on TV, being special. So Keith and Jean were like, something's changing here. And it seems like people are changing in some fundamental way. So they really wanted to find this out. And they really wanted to get some data behind this idea. They were becoming more narcissistic. And luckily, there is this test that measures some narcissistic traits.

12:17Kali Trzesniewski:It's called the Narcissistic Personality Inventory. And what it's meant to do is to measure these grandiose narcissistic traits. It's basically how great you think you are.

12:27Lee Hammock:Can we take it? Can I take it? Yeah. Gosh, when I just said, can I take it? I was like, is that a sign that I'm a narcissist?

12:34Kali Trzesniewski:Don't you want me to take it too?

12:36Lee Hammock:How special I am on the narcissism scale.

12:40Kali Trzesniewski:Before we take it, do you have any guesses? Who will be higher on the narcissism scale?

12:47Lee Hammock:Oh, I am totally going to be more of a narcissist than you are.

12:50Kali Trzesniewski:There's no doubt in my mind. You never know. You never know. Okay, so the instructions are to read each pair of statements below and place an X by the one that comes closest to describing your feelings and beliefs about yourself. You may feel that neither statement describes you well, but pick the one that comes closest.

13:06Lee Hammock:It's like a BuzzFeed quiz where just a photo of Senator Palpatine is going to show up on the screen.

13:13Kali Trzesniewski:It's not the nerd personality index. Lack of empathy, Rose. Oh, no. Okay, let me put the link in the chat.

13:25Lee Hammock:Okay, I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. Okay. All right, I'll read the first one. I have a natural talent for influencing people. I am not good at influencing people.

13:38Kali Trzesniewski:I'm going to say not good.

13:40Lee Hammock:I'm going to say I have a natural talent.

13:44Kali Trzesniewski:The thought of ruling the world frightens the hell out of me versus if I ruled the world, it would be a better place. I think about this a lot. It's number two. If I ruled the world, it would be a better place. Yeah, yeah. It's not a hard bar right now, is it?

13:58Lee Hammock:I mean.

14:00Kali Trzesniewski:I am no better or no worse than most people. Or I think I am a special person.

14:06Lee Hammock:I really like to be the center of attention. It makes me uncomfortable to be the center of attention.

14:10Kali Trzesniewski:I just want to be reasonably happy or I want to amount to something in the eyes of the world.

14:16Lee Hammock:Everybody likes to hear my stories. Sometimes I tell good stories.

14:22Kali Trzesniewski:Yeah, I feel confident in this one. The other day I told someone this story. I was like, oh, the other day I had a bunch of pineapple. It was really sweet. And then I had a bagel. And the bagel was really sour in comparison to the pineapple. It was like, great story. So that is a sometimes good storyteller. I actually think everybody likes to hear my stories. Oh, okay. People sometimes believe what I tell them, or I can make anybody believe anything I want them to. I wish. I wish, right?

14:55Lee Hammock:Oh, my gosh. Wouldn't the world be a better place if everyone believed everything we said on Science Versus?

15:01Kali Trzesniewski:Give her a point on the narcissism scale for that.

15:11Lee Hammock:Okay. Okay. So before you reveal how narcissistic we are, Tell me, what is the average on this test?

15:20Kali Trzesniewski:So when they have used this test in sort of a general sample, just so you know, is in college students. That's kind of how it's been normed.

15:29Lee Hammock:Okay.

15:29Kali Trzesniewski:The average score is about 15. 15. Yeah. Do you want to hear about standard deviation?

15:35Lee Hammock:I do want to hear about standard deviations, yes.

15:37Kali Trzesniewski:Okay, that's about seven points on either side. So, you know, eight to 22. So that's like you're in like the middle chunk of the population. Okay.

15:48Lee Hammock:Got it.

15:49Kali Trzesniewski:Less than eight, you're really on a tail end of like you're kind of a shrinking violet.

15:53Lee Hammock:Okay.

15:54Kali Trzesniewski:More than 22, you're getting up there in your narcissistic traits. All right. How did we do it? You got 17. Ooh. And I got 10.

16:05Lee Hammock:Ooh. Okay. So we're in, we're both normal. You're a little higher up on the normal.

16:11Kali Trzesniewski:Okay. Okay. Also, I just have to tell you this, Wendy. I found this paper published by Dr. Drew from Loveline. Do you know him? No, no, I don't. Oh, okay. It was this radio show where they answered sex questions. It was like big in the 2000s. They always had celebrity guests come on. And it turns out this whole time, Dr. Drew was giving the NPI to celebrities that came onto the show. And he published a paper to see like, are celebrities more narcissistic than other people? Which kind of celebrity is the most narcissistic? narcissistic. And just for fun, I'll tell you that they found the celebrity that had the highest score was radio hosts.

16:51Kali Trzesniewski:Reality TV stars.

16:53Lee Hammock:Of course, reality TV stars, yeah.

16:55Kali Trzesniewski:Reality TV stars got on average 19.5, which is so funny because that is like part of what kicked this all off for Keith and Jean.

17:03Lee Hammock:Okay, so with all that in mind, that 19 is a reality TV star from the 2000s. And a 15 is punked exactly normal. So I'm exactly in between the average person and a reality star. You know what? Science podcast host. That fits. That feels exactly where I belong.

17:27Kali Trzesniewski:Yeah, it checks out. I mean, that seems like just narcissistic enough. But to take this all back to Keith and Jean sitting in their basement.

17:36Lee Hammock:Oh, yeah. That's why we did this. I have completely forgotten about Keith and Jean, by the way.

17:41Kali Trzesniewski:Yeah, that's the whole point. That's why we took this test. Yes, of course. So the scientists think that people are getting more narcissistic, right? And so what they do is they find all these studies where people have taken this test. So they were able to find data on more than 16 ,000 college students taking this personality test between 1979 and 2006. So then they crunched the numbers and they found that on average, narcissism seemed to be going up. Yeah.

18:10Craig Malkin:We found an increase in narcissism. And I looked at the data about 25 different times to make sure. And that's what we found.

18:18Lee Hammock:Those traits. Those traits. You see more and more Wendy's, less and less roses.

18:22Kali Trzesniewski:Yeah, I guess you could say that. And not only that, Keith and Jean also looked at all the stuff that was going on in the culture. So besides the reality TV stuff, stuff that they thought was evidence of people getting more narcissistic. So they pointed out that more people are getting cosmetic surgery. Parents have begun giving their children more unique names. And so they concluded, we are in a narcissism epidemic. Gene Twenge published a book called Generation Me. And all of this just blew up. It became huge. There was a ton of media attention on this. This particular group of young people heard a lot of things growing up like believe in yourself.

19:01Craig Malkin:Everybody thinks they're going to be a reality star by posting their selfie online, their video online. A generation more narcissistic, materialistic, naively entitled.

19:12Lee Hammock:Do you remember this? Yes, I remember all of this. Yeah. And it felt, I have to say, it felt very old man yelling at clouds to recall a meme that was probably around back then. There was, as someone who was a young science journalist hustling her way to success.

19:38Kali Trzesniewski:Hustling her way up the narcissism spectrum. Exactly.

19:40Lee Hammock:But a lot of the talk did feel like kids these days. Yeah. I was just seeing a pattern of criticizing the younger generation as opposed to necessarily a pattern around a narcissism epidemic.

19:54Kali Trzesniewski:Well, okay. What you just said is exactly what this other academic I spoke to felt like at the time too. Her name is Kali Treznewski. She's another psychologist. She's currently a professor at the University of California, Davis. So when she first saw this paper back when it came out, it made her really uneasy for a lot of the reasons you just said. This idea of, you know, everybody is increasing in narcissism and like this generation is just going to end up in an awful place because they can't take criticism and they're all just full of themselves, out for themselves and don't care about anyone else.

20:30Kali Trzesniewski:Those are quite strong statements to be making that leads to these stereotypes like, oh, yeah, there you are. There's that lazy youth again. So Kali, I mean, at this time, she because she was, you know, a little skeptical, a little skeptical, but, you know, also just like if this is true, we need good. we need a lot of data behind it because we are so prone to this confirmation bias where we think the younger generation sucks. So she found this other data set. It's called Monitoring the Future. And they survey high school seniors every year. They've been doing it since the mid-70s. It's not the NPI, but they do ask questions about things like, how do you see yourself compared to others?

21:12Kali Trzesniewski:How satisfied are you with yourself? How competent are you? So questions that could be related to an inflated ego. So she and her co-author looked at students' answers to those questions between 1976 and 2006.

21:26Lee Hammock:And what did they see?

21:28Kali Trzesniewski:They saw no narcissism epidemic. Yeah, so we found that most things didn't change.

21:37Lee Hammock:Oh.

21:38Kali Trzesniewski:Yeah, the high school seniors in 1976 were just as likely to say, like, I'm not that special or I'm kind of special as the high school seniors in 2006. So she didn't find any evidence in this data of kids really changing.

21:55Lee Hammock:Interesting.

21:56Kali Trzesniewski:And so basically ever since, there's been back and forth in the literature about what was actually going on over this time period. Yeah. Fast forwarding, what's really interesting is about what's happening today. Scientists have kept doing these analyses since this. Yeah. That, you know, that data was up to 2006. It's 2024. Yeah. And so we do have newer studies where they've done something similar, looking at newer crops of college kids. Right. And actually, what they're seeing now is that narcissism has been going down.

22:28Lee Hammock:Wow.

22:29Kali Trzesniewski:Even Keith, who was on Team Narcissism Epidemic, remember? Yeah. He was like, yeah, it's going down. At least what the NPI can measure, that grandiose narcissism.

22:37Craig Malkin:I mean, right now, what it looks like is that grandiose narcissism is going down.

22:47Lee Hammock:whoa huh huh so what is what do these researchers make of that so the debate here i mean it's it's

22:56Kali Trzesniewski:funny at this point lots of scientists seem to agree and it's not just collie it's not just keith but also like there's a there's another group in from the university of vienna they just put out this big meta-analysis all these different researchers in the space agree that there is currently no evidence that narcissism is up compared to a few decades ago. If there's a controversy, it's whether there was a bump for a while.

23:20Lee Hammock:So maybe there was something about that inflection point reality TV coming online.

23:28Kali Trzesniewski:Well, it's hard to say because not everybody agrees that there was this bump. That's still controversial. And Keith now says, like, look, at this point, it's an archaeological question because it's over.

23:45Lee Hammock:So we are not in a narcissism epidemic. We may never have been. Yeah.

23:53Kali Trzesniewski:But so far what we've been talking about is this test that nerds use to measure, you know, kind of normal levels of narcissism. We haven't been talking about pathological narcissism, which is what Lee has. Right. And people with this can be really self-centered, hurtful, manipulative. So after the break, we are going to turn back to that darker type of narcissism to talk about what's going on in their heads. And if you've got someone like this in your life, how can you deal with them? Ooh, coming up.

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26:40Lee Hammock:Welcome back. Today on the show, narcissists, we're wearing our little mirrors to spend a day focusing on them, which they would love, wouldn't they, Rose? So where do we go next?

26:54Kali Trzesniewski:Yeah. So we're moving to this pathological narcissism that goes way beyond us just kind of being our most arrogant selves. And I talked about this with psychologist and narcissism specialist Craig Malkin.

27:07Craig Malkin:Really the core of pathological narcissism is the strive to feel special.

27:12Lee Hammock:Feel special.

27:14Craig Malkin:It's sort of an addictive, compulsive need to turn to that feeling of feeling special at the expense of everything else.

27:22Kali Trzesniewski:It's about being so self-centered, so consistently, that it actually interferes with your relationships, your ability to work, and can translate into some really crappy behaviors. Craig calls them the triple E.

27:39Craig Malkin:Exploitation, which is doing whatever it takes to feel special, no matter the cost to others. Entitlement, which is acting as if the world should bend to our will because we're so special. And empathy impairments, that's getting so caught up in that need to feel special that you lose sight of the needs and feelings of others. That, triple E, explains all of the worst behaviors in narcissistic personality disorder.

28:07Kali Trzesniewski:So to be diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder, the DSM, which is like the psychological Bible, says you need to display a pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and lack of empathy.

28:21Craig Malkin:All right, this is somebody who's so focused on themselves that they wreak havoc in relationships. It's pervasive.

28:29Kali Trzesniewski:And this disorder, it's not super common. It's estimated that in the U.S., maybe 1 % of the population has NPD. 1%. So to go back to Lee, who we heard from at the start of the show, this was the guy that had this big fight with his wife after he yelled at the baby and he got diagnosed with this. Okay. He told me that this desire to feel really special and important is a major thing that has driven him for years.

28:52W. Keith Campbell:Kind of like the movie, I always get the kids movie references. When I watched the movie Coco, I always wanted to end up on the offrenda, not just buried and gone and just forgot about. You want to be remembered as somebody who changed the trajectory of your family. You want to have the portrait of yourself in the family house, right? Well, that's Grandpa Lee right there. He changed the trajectory of the family right here. What more can I do to leave my mark on the world? What more can I do so I'm just not a normal person? normalcy being average is, it's like painful, it's like death, it's almost like dying.

29:28W. Keith Campbell:I want my tombstone to be a statue.

29:30Kali Trzesniewski:That's a hard mark to hit. And so it turns out that this drive to feel special doesn't always feel good. So one thing that might surprise people is that a lot of narcissists are not happy people. That is surprising.

29:44Lee Hammock:It is, because I guess there is this assumption that if you were a person in the world that lacked empathy, that didn't give a shit about anyone else. You could just do whatever you wanted. And that somehow makes you...

29:59Kali Trzesniewski:That sounds kind of freeing. Right, exactly, exactly. But that's not what we find? No. I mean, one study found that a third of people with NPD have major depressive disorder. A fifth have generalized anxiety disorder, which is much higher than the general population.

30:16Lee Hammock:Yeah, that really is surprising. I mean, it's just not how you picture a narcissist, I don't think.

30:21Kali Trzesniewski:Yeah, but that's the case. And it's actually something that Lee can really relate to because he's also been diagnosed with depression and anxiety alongside NPD. And a thing that Lee told me that really helped me see why you'd be so miserable as a narcissist is that his ego really can't handle any criticism. This is pretty common with this disorder, by the way, being very sensitive to any criticism. And so when this happens to Lee, it just eats and eats at him.

30:50W. Keith Campbell:criticism feels like a truly, like a wound. Like it just doesn't go away. It's just like, sometimes it gets healed up. It's kind of like a scar, right? It gets healed up. But sometimes it'll randomly just burst open. Like literally stuff that I forgot about will pop into my head that somebody said to me in the club when I was 21 years old. And it'll hurt my feelings now. I'm like, but it's hard. It's so hard just to kind of let stuff go.

31:16Kali Trzesniewski:And so he's always on the lookout for his ego getting dinged and like preemptively getting ready to fight?

31:23W. Keith Campbell:Like when I first meet people, always try to find a way to take them down, just in case. If it's not physical violence, of course, it might be like, hmm, what about you can I hurt your feelings with? Just in case you're trying to hurt my feelings, how can I hurt your feelings?

31:35Kali Trzesniewski:You're looking for weaknesses in case you need to exploit them later?

31:38W. Keith Campbell:Just in case. Yep, just in case. Just in case. Just in case they insult me or joke on me, how can I joke on you back to hurt your feelings or get the attention back on you? Because that's how my mind just works. It's always like attacking and vengeance.

31:50Kali Trzesniewski:This is a pretty miserable way to live.

31:52Lee Hammock:Yeah. And hearing that, I could really see how narcissism can manifest as anxiety because you just have these ruminating thoughts of anger over and over again.

32:06Kali Trzesniewski:And that's not all. I mean, there's a review paper that found that they often suffer from feelings of meaninglessness. They're very critical of themselves. And they struggle to express their emotions.

32:21Lee Hammock:So is there a way to help them? Because this feels like it's kind of the worst of both worlds. No one is happy. The people around them aren't happy. They're not happy. Can we do anything about it?

32:32Kali Trzesniewski:Yeah. I mean, so Lee, of course, had that question right after he had his moment of revelation. because like the next thing he Googled was like, cure for narcissistic personality disorder, right? And the results were disappointing.

32:46W. Keith Campbell:None. There's no medicine. There's no pills, anything like that to take. There's no cure. Go to therapy. So I was just like, oh, well, I guess I have to go to therapy.

32:55Kali Trzesniewski:So that's the treatment we have. Therapy. Talk therapy. Therapists might do things like try to help their patient be more aware of triggers that lead to narcissistic actions. One paper described what you can do as a therapist is move a patient from me mode to we mode. Okay. I mean, did Lee end up trying therapy? Yeah, he did start therapy. It was several months after the big fight with his wife. And when he went to see this therapist. She was like, okay, so what are you doing here at 32 years old?

33:28W. Keith Campbell:I was like, oh, okay. I just started crying because I know what to say. I was just like literally just started crying.

33:35Kali Trzesniewski:Uh-huh. Was that unusual for you? Crying?

33:38W. Keith Campbell:Yeah. Yeah.

33:39Kali Trzesniewski:Did she ask you why you're crying?

33:41W. Keith Campbell:I was like, I feel like I don't have any emotions. I was like, I just feel like I'm empty inside. And I started crying. She's like, no, you don't. You're crying. So there's something there. There's something in there. You're definitely crying. So there's something in there. It's just there's something blocking it. We got to figure out a way to kind of lower down the gates. She's kind of described it like a castle. You got to figure out a way to lower down the gates. Because you can't walk around. just like sealed up all the time.

34:07Lee Hammock:And did he, was he able to lower the gates?

34:10Kali Trzesniewski:Yeah. I mean, there's no magical transformation. He says he's still a narcissist, but over the years it has helped him learn to put some space between his thoughts and his actions.

34:21W. Keith Campbell:My very first thought is typically the narcissistic reaction. It really, really is. It's kind of like, pow. The first thought is probably going to be self-serving, super defensive and egotistical, whatever it is. So I have to take my time to respond now. So I take a deep breath. I'm like, okay. I have to ask myself, is that narcissism or is this normal? It's kind of like I have dual thoughts now. I have competing thoughts. It's kind of like it's opened a whole new door up and there's somebody else living up here. And they're just like sitting in a room. Like my brain is like, there's a narcissistic part of me and a non-narcissistic part of me.

34:55W. Keith Campbell:They're like sitting in the living room arguing, you know? All day long? All day long. Yeah. I don't find very much peace.

35:04Lee Hammock:Oh, that's so interesting how Lee talks about it. That therapy has allowed him to see a different way of thinking, the quote-unquote what he says, normal way of thinking, but he's still a narcissist. But that, I mean, just that step seems like it's been helpful to him. I mean, do we have any data on other people with narcissism? Like, what's the chance if a narcissist goes to therapy, they will change?

35:35Kali Trzesniewski:We really tried to run this down, but it's very hard to put numbers around it because there are no trials exclusively on people with NPD. Annoying. Yeah. And, you know, psychologists have said that people with NPD tend to drop out of therapy. So maybe that's one reason, you know, we don't have these. But we do have some evidence that is promising in people who do stick it out. There are some case studies showing that people with NPD can improve after two and a half to five years of therapy. And a lot of therapists that I talked to told me the same thing, that they have helped people with this disorder.

36:11Lee Hammock:So that is how narcissists can help themselves. But on the flip side, I mean, if you are living with a narcissist who's perhaps not working on themselves in the way that Lee is, what can you do? Yeah.

36:28Kali Trzesniewski:So this question of how do you deal with a narcissist in your life is something that Craig, our psychologist from earlier, he specializes in. He sees a lot of people who come to therapy. Oftentimes they come in trying to figure out if someone in their life is a narcissist and then what should they be doing about it. And his number one tip is to not focus so much on the other person's diagnosis, but to figure out whether or not the relationship is working for you.

36:58Craig Malkin:The one thing people don't do that I often help them get to is just to be in touch with the questions like, am I safe in this relationship emotionally, physically? Do I like how I'm being treated regardless of where it comes from in this person?

37:15Lee Hammock:If you decide, I mean, I do like this person, but God, they've got some crappy traits that I'd like them not to have. Can you do anything about that or you just have to take them as they come?

37:25Kali Trzesniewski:Right. So if you do decide the relationship is worth working on, you want to stay, or let's say it's like a relative or a boss, Craig has a few strategies. Right. They're based on this observation that you can actually boost empathy in people with narcissism. There's a body of research on this. And Craig has come up with some ways to basically exploit that. So the first thing is something he calls an empathy prompt. And this is basically in your conversation with this person about why you're unhappy with their behavior. You sort of set it up by priming the other person to feel empathy for you while you're giving them feedback.

38:06Kali Trzesniewski:And there's really a particular way that could get through to someone with narcissism. So he gave me an example. Say your partner is someone who can often act very dismissive of your ideas. You might want to say...

38:18Craig Malkin:Something like, sweetheart, you're the most important person in my life. And that's why it's so devastating when you dismiss my ideas out of hand. I just feel like somebody I love and care about really doesn't think much of me. It's just heartbreaking.

38:36Kali Trzesniewski:Wow.

38:37Craig Malkin:Right? It's anybody who has the capacity for empathy at all, you know, that will melt them.

38:44Kali Trzesniewski:Yeah. That's like a gunpowder-packed statement because it gives so much about how much you value them.

38:54Craig Malkin:Yes.

38:55Kali Trzesniewski:In addition to this is what I'm not getting from you.

38:58Craig Malkin:Yes, exactly. Wow. So that's an empathy prompt.

39:01Kali Trzesniewski:Therapy bomb.

39:03Lee Hammock:Or does it sound like you just had a revelation? Is there someone you want to try this on?

39:07Kali Trzesniewski:Maybe.

39:12Kali Trzesniewski:Wendy, because you love being the center of attention and you people always love your story. OK, OK. What else? What other tips did Craig have? Craig had different strategies for like how stubbornly narcissistic people are. So for someone that's like maybe not going to melt from the empathy prompt, what he suggests is this thing called catching good. So here's what he means by that.

39:41Craig Malkin:There's going to be moments where they say something thoughtful or kind, caring, where they appreciate you. You want to catch those.

39:50Kali Trzesniewski:He's like, say you think you have a narcissistic boss, but one day they do like one nice thing. Maybe they take you out for lunch. They listen to an idea that you had. You can tell them.

40:03Craig Malkin:Yeah, I so appreciate that you invited me to lunch. I just feel so much more motivated to get to the finish line on tasks. So I really want to thank you for that.

40:15Lee Hammock:Oh, that's great. That's great. You know what really stands out here is the advice that you don't tell your boss. That makes me feel great. Thanks. Instead, tell them you're now more motivated to get your work done. Because the idea is that your narcissistic boss cares about your work. They don't care about your feelings.

40:40Kali Trzesniewski:Yes. He ties it to like, here's the outcome that will benefit you. Yes. So if that doesn't work and the empathy prompts don't work and you can't, you know, this person's still in your life. There is one last strategy that I think we're talking about. And especially because this is something that the internet loves talking about. And this is called gray rocking.

41:01Lee Hammock:Gray rocking.

41:02Kali Trzesniewski:So this is the idea that like if you're in a fight with a narcissist, you basically become so still and so boring and quiet that you are acting like a gray rock. Oh.

41:15Craig Malkin:It doesn't give them anything to fight with. Gray rock is simply when you respond or interact, you're not emotionally engaged. You're flat. You're not really offering anything.

41:27Kali Trzesniewski:We don't really have science here, but Craig says this is a tactic that people have found useful. The key is that you give the other person as little ammunition as possible.

41:38Craig Malkin:The mistake people make is explaining themselves or defending. And now you really get things going. Because the more narcissistic someone is, the more they're going to have to say in response to that. So the last thing you want to do is invite more answers or more reactions.

41:54Lee Hammock:Yeah, these are sort of helpful suggestions, but if I was employing these in a relationship I could get out of, it would really make me question whether that was the best option.

42:09Kali Trzesniewski:Yeah, Craig was definitely like, that is something worth considering. And he also really wanted to relay to people that if you feel unsafe in your relationship, your priority should not be on using these techniques to improve communication. It should be on making sure you're safe. Yep.

42:24Lee Hammock:Absolutely. So I guess the takeaways of this episode are that narcissists are among us. There may not be as many of them out there as the internet would have you believe, but they are among us. Yeah. And there are some ways that you can try to deal with them. Maybe not so science-backed, but hopefully these tips are helpful. And if you are the narcissist or think that you are, going to therapy is a good idea. Rose, how are you walking around the world differently after researching this episode?

43:08Kali Trzesniewski:Well, it's just been a good reminder that when we start to focus on ourselves too much, it can be harmful and it can actually like make you less happy and it makes me really want to catch those moments where I'm doing that where I'm like really spinning around about myself my own legacy or what people think of me noting when that's actually to a point where it's not helpful it's it's making me less happy than I would be otherwise I think that's a takeaway that even someone who's scored low on the narcissism spectrum not to brag can take away it's like especially low, I would say. Extraordinarily low, I would say.

43:45Even me can benefit from

43:49Kali Trzesniewski:thinking about narcissism. Thanks, Rose. Thanks, Wendy.

43:59Lee Hammock:This episode was produced by Rose Rimler with help from me, Wendy Zuckerman, along with Michelle Dang, Meryl Horne and Aketi Foster-Keys. We're edited by Blythe Terrell. Mix and sound design by Sam Bear. Fact-checking by Erica Akiko Howard. Music written by Peter Leonard, Emma Munger, So Wiley, Bumi Hidaka and Bobby Lord. Thanks to all of the researchers that we spoke to for this episode, including Dr. Igor Weinberg, Dr. April Ilkman, Dr. Jennifer Gerlach, Dr. Betsy Edishile, Professor Brad Bushman, Professor Brent Donilon, Professor Chris Barry, Dr. Glenn Gare and Winky Marr. Special thanks to Rachel Humphries for editing help.

44:36Lee Hammock:And a big thanks to everyone who helped us with this season. including Jack Weinstein, Hunter, Chris Suda, Oscar, Elise, Dylan, the Zuckerman family, and Joseph Lavelle Wilson. Science Versus is a Spotify Studios original. Listen to us for free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. We are everywhere. But if you are listening on Spotify, then tap the bell icon so you get notifications when new episodes come out. And whatever podcast app you are using. We would love it if you love the show to give us a five-star review. It helps new people find us, which we love. I'm Wendy Zuckerman. We'll back to you soon.

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