Who's to blame when a child begins to turn into a narcissist, putting them on the path to become a narcissistic adult? Researchers suggest parents pondering that question might want to take a look in the mirror.
U.S. and European researchers surveyed hundreds of parents and their children for a year and a half to see if they could identify factors that led to children having an inflated view of themselves.
Their takeaway main finding? Parents who "overvalued" their children ended up with children who scored higher on subsequent tests for narcissism.
Telling a child he or she is superior to other children and somehow entitled to special consideration is to put them on the road to narcissism, the researchers suggest.
"When children are seen by their parents as being more special and more entitled than other children, they may internalize the view that they are superior individuals, a view that is at the core of narcissism," the researchers wrote in a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"But when children are treated by their parents with affection and appreciation, they may internalize the view that they are valuable individuals, a view that is at the core of self-esteem," they wrote.
The researchers initiated their study to see if they could shed light on two competing theories on the origin of narcissism in children.
One theory holds that children whose parents withhold affection and warmth put themselves above others in an effort to receive approval they never got from their parents.
The other hypothesis is that parents who do the opposite -- overvaluing and emphasizing a child's supposed superiority -- create a child who internalizes that supposed exceptional status.
The study results came firmly down on the side of a connection between parents who overvalued their children and children being more likely to become narcissists, says Eddie Brummelman, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Amsterdam.
"Children become more narcissistic when they are put on a pedestal -- when they are given the feeling that they are more special, more entitled and more unique than others," he says.
Children were found to have better self-esteem -- the healthier cousin of narcissism -- when their parents showed they were loved and appreciated, which gave the children a feeling they were valuable as individuals, Brummelman says.
The distance between self-esteem and narcissism may be slight, he notes, but parenting can make all the difference.
"Self esteem is more about feeling good about yourself," he says. "Narcissism is more about wanting to feel good about yourself."
