The old phrase of “nature versus nurture” certainly comes to mind when asking the question of if Narcissists are born that way or if it is the way they are brought up. Personally, I feel it’s a little bit of both.
Nature and nurture?
To determine if a Narcissist is influenced by both nature and nurture, it’s necessary to examine each component.
1.Nature
When people are born, it is already genetically determined what color eyes they will end up having, or if they will be tall or short. In some ways, I feel it may be partially genetically determined if people will end up being Narcissists. If you consider that genes can also determine a person’s personality, by the same token, those same genes can also determine if that same person will end up with a personality disorder, such as Narcissistic Personality Disorder. 2.Nurture In my post All In The Family: Narcissists Of A Feather Flock Together, I noted that a Narcissistic parent can have quite a bit of influence in how the child is brought up. That parent can treat the children as if no one is above them, thus creating a narcissistic feeling in those children. I also quoted an article from Psychology Today that cited a study done by Dutch psychologists. Lenny Bernstein, of the Washington Post, cited that same study in his article, How parents create narcissistic children. Bernstein wrote that when children are overvalued and told that they are more special than everyone around them, they can develop certain tendencies. “Psychoanalytic theory suggested that narcissists were the result of parents who showed them too little warmth. So Bushman and Brummelman pitted social learning theory -- the idea that you learn through modeled behavior -- against the psychoanalytic argument and found that, indeed, children learn their narcissism from parents who teach them that they are more than special.”
The above quote referred to the researchers who conducted the study – Brad Bushman of Ohio State University and Eddie Brummelman of the University of Amsterdam Utrecht University. These researchers were also quick to point out that it isn’t just parental overvaluation as the sole cause of narcissism. They also were quoted as saying that some children might even have temperamental traits that when exposed to parental overvaluation can develop narcissism.
What are your thoughts on the nature versus nurture topic? Comment below. And as always, I appreciate you sharing your stories with me.
2 Comments
12/23/2016 05:15:33 pm
When doing my studies in Criminal Psychology, my thesis was focused on the nature vs nurture debate. When talking about Psychopathy, the great “Nature vs. Nurture Debate”, has become the cornerstone of an enquiry in Criminology that asks, “Are criminals born or made?” For those not familiar with this debate, Nature concerns itself with the individual's innate qualities (i.e. genetics, chemical activity, hormone levels, physiology, IQ, etc.); while Nurture is concerned with the individual's lived experience (i.e. perinatal matrices, environmental influences, bonding, socialization, socioeconomic status, deprivation, physical or emotional trauma, education, etc.). The task of my thesis was to determine how these multifaceted factors (individual, familial, and social factors) affect the development and behavioural traits of a child in a way that shapes juvenile delinquency, mediating their entry into criminality, and in some instances, leading to Psychopathy.
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Jenn
12/23/2016 09:41:08 pm
Christine.......Thank you for sharing that. That is quite fascinating. I remember learning about nature versus nurture in my psychology classes in college. I always thought it was so interesting to dive into the hows and whys of it all.
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