Study: More college freshmen feel 'above
average'
MARTHA IRVINE, AP National Writer
JUNE 17, 2011
San Diego State University psychology professor Jean Twenge has
made a career out of finding data that she says shows that college
students and others their age are more self-centered--narcissistic even--
than past generations.
CHICAGO (AP) — Among academics who track the behavior of young
adults and teens, there's a touchy debate: Should the word "entitled" be
used when talking about today's younger people? Are they
overconfident in themselves?
Jean Twenge, author of the book "Generation Me," is in the middle of the
discussion. The San Diego State University psychology professor has
made a career out of finding data that she says shows that college
students and others their age are more self-centered — narcissistic
even — than past generations. Now she's turned up data showing that
they also feel more superior about themselves than their elders did when
they were young.
"There are some advantages and some disadvantages to self-esteem,
so having some degree of confidence is often a good thing," says
Twenge. But as she sees it, there's a growing disconnect between self-
perception and reality.
"It's not just confidence. It's overconfidence."
And that, she says, can pose problems, in relationships and the
workplace — though others argue that it's not so easy to generalize.
"If you actually look at the data, you can't just condense it into a sound
bite. It's more nuanced than that," says John Pryor, director of UCLA's
Cooperative Institutional Research program, which produces an annual
national survey of hundreds of thousands of college freshman, on which
Twenge and her colleagues based their latest study.
That study was recently published online in the British journal Self and
Identity.
Among other things, Twenge and her colleagues found that a growing
percentage of incoming college freshmen rated themselves as "above
average" in several categories, compared with college freshmen who
were surveyed in the 1960s.
When it came to social self-confidence, about half of freshmen
questioned in 2009 said they were above average, compared to fewer
than a third in 1966. Meanwhile, 60 percent in 2009 rated their
intellectual self-confidence as above average, compared with 39 percent
in 1966, the first year the survey was given.
In the study, the authors also argue that intellectual confidence may
have been bolstered by grade inflation, noting that, in 1966, only 19
percent of college students who were surveyed earned an "A'' or "A-
minus" average in high school, compared with 48 percent in 2009.
"So students might be more likely to think they're superior because
they've been given better grades," Twenge says.
Statements like that can set off the generational firestorm.
Young people are quick to feel picked on — and rightly so, says Kali
Trzesniewski, an associate professor of human development at the
University of California, Davis.
"People have been saying for generations that the next generation is
crumbling the world," Trzesniewski says. "There are quotes going back
to Socrates that say that kids are terrible."
But in her own research, she says she's been hard-pressed to find many
differences when comparing one generation to the next — and little
evidence that even an increase in confidence has had a negative effect.
Many bosses and others in the workplace have long argued that recent
college students often arrive with unreasonably high expectations for
salary and an unwillingness to take criticism or to pay their dues.
"But a lot of them have a confidence that we wished we had," says
psychologist Jeffrey Arnett, a research professor in the psychology
department at Clark University in Massachusetts. He studies "emerging
adulthood," a term that has been coined to describe the period from age
18 to 29 when many young adults are finding their footing.
Arnett doesn't object to Twenge's findings. But he adds: "I disagree with
using those findings as a way to promote these negative stereotypes of
young people, which I spend a lot of my time battling against."
He says those stereotypes also overshadow positive trends related to
young people, in the last decade or so.
average'
MARTHA IRVINE, AP National Writer
JUNE 17, 2011
San Diego State University psychology professor Jean Twenge has
made a career out of finding data that she says shows that college
students and others their age are more self-centered--narcissistic even--
than past generations.
CHICAGO (AP) — Among academics who track the behavior of young
adults and teens, there's a touchy debate: Should the word "entitled" be
used when talking about today's younger people? Are they
overconfident in themselves?
Jean Twenge, author of the book "Generation Me," is in the middle of the
discussion. The San Diego State University psychology professor has
made a career out of finding data that she says shows that college
students and others their age are more self-centered — narcissistic
even — than past generations. Now she's turned up data showing that
they also feel more superior about themselves than their elders did when
they were young.
"There are some advantages and some disadvantages to self-esteem,
so having some degree of confidence is often a good thing," says
Twenge. But as she sees it, there's a growing disconnect between self-
perception and reality.
"It's not just confidence. It's overconfidence."
And that, she says, can pose problems, in relationships and the
workplace — though others argue that it's not so easy to generalize.
"If you actually look at the data, you can't just condense it into a sound
bite. It's more nuanced than that," says John Pryor, director of UCLA's
Cooperative Institutional Research program, which produces an annual
national survey of hundreds of thousands of college freshman, on which
Twenge and her colleagues based their latest study.
That study was recently published online in the British journal Self and
Identity.
Among other things, Twenge and her colleagues found that a growing
percentage of incoming college freshmen rated themselves as "above
average" in several categories, compared with college freshmen who
were surveyed in the 1960s.
When it came to social self-confidence, about half of freshmen
questioned in 2009 said they were above average, compared to fewer
than a third in 1966. Meanwhile, 60 percent in 2009 rated their
intellectual self-confidence as above average, compared with 39 percent
in 1966, the first year the survey was given.
In the study, the authors also argue that intellectual confidence may
have been bolstered by grade inflation, noting that, in 1966, only 19
percent of college students who were surveyed earned an "A'' or "A-
minus" average in high school, compared with 48 percent in 2009.
"So students might be more likely to think they're superior because
they've been given better grades," Twenge says.
Statements like that can set off the generational firestorm.
Young people are quick to feel picked on — and rightly so, says Kali
Trzesniewski, an associate professor of human development at the
University of California, Davis.
"People have been saying for generations that the next generation is
crumbling the world," Trzesniewski says. "There are quotes going back
to Socrates that say that kids are terrible."
But in her own research, she says she's been hard-pressed to find many
differences when comparing one generation to the next — and little
evidence that even an increase in confidence has had a negative effect.
Many bosses and others in the workplace have long argued that recent
college students often arrive with unreasonably high expectations for
salary and an unwillingness to take criticism or to pay their dues.
"But a lot of them have a confidence that we wished we had," says
psychologist Jeffrey Arnett, a research professor in the psychology
department at Clark University in Massachusetts. He studies "emerging
adulthood," a term that has been coined to describe the period from age
18 to 29 when many young adults are finding their footing.
Arnett doesn't object to Twenge's findings. But he adds: "I disagree with
using those findings as a way to promote these negative stereotypes of
young people, which I spend a lot of my time battling against."
He says those stereotypes also overshadow positive trends related to
young people, in the last decade or so.
San Diego
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