The correlation shows that positive feedback should be tied to good behavior in a child rather than piled on indiscriminately, says psychologist Luke Hyde of the University of Michigan, who did not participate in the work. A 2008 meta-analysis of 85 studies showed that narcissism is on the rise in young adults in the West, which could stem in part from a cultural emphasis on praise, with the goal of boosting high self-esteem, notes Eddie Brummelman, lead author of the PNAS paper. “It might be well intended,” he adds, “but it actually backfires.”
Such results support the praise-centric school of thought on narcissistic origins, although other scientists in the field point out that controversy still remains over the definition of narcissism itself. Brummelman and his colleagues considered narcissistic personality traits (such as the desire for admiration), not narcissistic personality disorder (characterized by an impairment of daily functioning), in their study because clinicians are discouraged from diagnosing the disorder in youth—no one knows at what age the full-blown psychiatric condition sets in.
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