"The root causes of crime" is a phrase made notorious by people who pushed social welfare programs and increased dependency on government as supposed cures for high crime rates way back in the late 1960s and 1970s. That notoriety should not deter us from looking for the true root causes of crime.
The "trunk cause," to continue with the arboreal metaphor, is antisocial attitudes. Some people have the attitude that they do not have to obey rules, they do not have to respect the rights of others, and they can simply take what they want whenever and from whomever they like. The "root causes," then, are the influences that cause people to develop such attitudes.
One root cause is bad parenting. Two main types of bad parents are those who don't give a damn and those who care very much but are misinformed. Prominent among the latter are parents who have bought into the "self-esteem" nonsense that kids should be lavished with praise at all times whether they have done anything to deserve it or not.
On Monday, an article was published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences titled Origins of Narcissism in Children. The abstract follows the break. Lenny Bernstein has this article in the WaPo.
The "trunk cause," to continue with the arboreal metaphor, is antisocial attitudes. Some people have the attitude that they do not have to obey rules, they do not have to respect the rights of others, and they can simply take what they want whenever and from whomever they like. The "root causes," then, are the influences that cause people to develop such attitudes.
One root cause is bad parenting. Two main types of bad parents are those who don't give a damn and those who care very much but are misinformed. Prominent among the latter are parents who have bought into the "self-esteem" nonsense that kids should be lavished with praise at all times whether they have done anything to deserve it or not.
On Monday, an article was published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences titled Origins of Narcissism in Children. The abstract follows the break. Lenny Bernstein has this article in the WaPo.
Narcissism levels have been increasing among Western youth, and contribute to societal problems such as aggression and violence. The origins of narcissism, however, are not well understood. Here, we report, to our knowledge, the first prospective longitudinal evidence on the origins of narcissism in children. We compared two perspectives: social learning theory (positing that narcissism is cultivated by parental overvaluation) and psychoanalytic theory (positing that narcissism is cultivated by lack of parental warmth). We timed the study in late childhood (ages 7-12), when individual differences in narcissism first emerge. In four 6-mo waves, 565 children and their parents reported child narcissism, child self-esteem, parental overvaluation, and parental warmth. Four-wave cross-lagged panel models were conducted. Results support social learning theory and contradict psychoanalytic theory: Narcissism was predicted by parental overvaluation, not by lack of parental warmth. Thus, children seem to acquire narcissism, in part, by internalizing parents' inflated views of them (e.g., "I am superior to others" and "I am entitled to privileges"). Attesting to the specificity of this finding, self-esteem was predicted by parental warmth, not by parental overvaluation. These findings uncover early socialization experiences that cultivate narcissism, and may inform interventions to curtail narcissistic development at an early age.
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