One thing I’ve learned about me after a lot of Googling myself is that most of my sentences contain the words I, me and myself. So when I found out that Dr. Drew Pinsky had given a test to 200 celebrities to find out if they’re more narcissistic than everyone else, I wanted to take the test too. And I wanted to print the results in a magazine.
In the least surprising poll not conducted by USA Today, Pinsky proved that celebrities are indeed narcissistic, in his new book The Mirror Effect: How Celebrity Narcissism Is Seducing America. While the average American scores a 15.3 on the Narcissism Personality Inventory, a 40-question test long used by psychologists, celebrities averaged 17.84. Longtime stars and newbies scored similarly, which might lead you to conclude that fame doesn’t turn people into narcissists — it just attracts them. The more a person’s fame was the unintended by-product of a skill, like playing an instrument, the lower the score. Reality-show participants landed numbers you’d expect only from 2-year-olds and fascist dictators. Since what I do can be replicated by anyone with a blog, I expected a 41. But I got a 14. Which rocked the foundation of my identity. I’m a man who writes about himself for a living. A man who has never said no to an offer to appear on E!, who tried out for The Real World, who loves it when Gawker mocks him, who has a “Joel Stein” RSS feed tapped directly into his veins, who is writing about himself in the third person. I’m a man who called everyone he knows to brag about his low narcissism score. If I’m not a narcissist, who am I When I ask Pinsky if, perhaps, the test doesn’t work on people who unwittingly outsmart it with their genius-level IQ, he assures me that the results were correct. Narcissists, it turns out, can’t even fake humility through transparently self-deprecating jokes. So my desire to be in magazines and on TV and on the stage of your child’s school play is not a problem. “If you were living in Greek times and decided you wanted to speak in front of the Athenian assembly, does that mean you’re a narcissist or that you wanted to participate in the institution of the times” Pinsky asks. I’m not sure, but I do know that he nailed my main reason for hoping someone discovers a time machine. I, it turns out, am just insanely egotistical — much like Pinsky, who scored a 16 on the test despite the fact that he has been on more VH1 shows than I have and has a photo of himself on his book jacket that is slightly bigger than the book itself. Egotism isn’t considered a personality disorder by the American Psychiatric Association, and it doesn’t prevent relationships, as narcissism does. It simply means that in our conversation, neither of us got to finish his sentences. Part of the reason my score was normal is that the definition of normal has moved. “If we’d taken this study in 1850, we’d all be an 8 or a 9,” says Pinsky. “The prevailing wisdom is that there’s a steady trend toward narcissism over the past 150 years.” In their new book, The Narcissism Epidemic, psychology professors Jean Twenge and W. Keith Campbell compare the growing psychological condition to obesity. The average college student’s score has gone up 20% since 1983, and scores in the dangerous over-20 range have nearly doubled. “No one ever talks about how much they like history on MySpace. They talk about how hot they are,” Twenge said. Then she said some other stuff, but unfortunately I stopped listening when she told me I was in the index of her book. Page 106. Check it out. Narcissism has probably been increasing since the Renaissance, picking up speed in the 1970s when Tom Wolfe coined the Me decade and Christopher Lasch wrote The Culture of Narcissism, then speeding into hyperdrive during the past few years. Both Twenge and Pinsky argue that the narcissism of celebrities is being mirrored in the culture by Americans who, like a child, mimic attention-getting star behavior by singing on YouTube, sexting photos, getting plastic surgery or naming their totally non-Hungarian son Laszlo Stein. But I’m not sure this is such a bad thing. There’s a reason we tell our kids they’re special and can do anything they want. A monolithic culture that puts a ceiling on personal expectations isn’t very interesting. One that celebrates differences and self-expression tolerates not only diversity but also the opportunity for individual greatness. Sure, that means some selfishness and entitlement and a few Tila Tequilas, but it also means greater freedom. And it’s a whole lot more entertaining. By the end of the year, I’m hoping to get up to a 15. See Stein’s recommendations for 10 things to do in Los Angeles.
See Stein’s recommendations for 10 things to do in Vegas.
