The Art of Manliness - The New Science of Narcissism

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. Now narcissism

00:00:11.680 is something that looms large in our cultural consciousness. We accuse friends and family

00:00:15.160 of being narcissistic, think we observe the quality of politicians and celebrities, and

00:00:19.180 wonder society is becoming more self-absorbed over time. But what is narcissism really once

00:00:23.900 you get beyond the pop cultural conception of colloquial buzzword? Well, my guest today

00:00:27.320 will unpack that for us. His name is W. Keith Campbell, and he's a professor of psychology

00:00:30.940 and the author of The New Science of Narcissism. Keith explains that narcissism centers on an

00:00:35.140 antagonistic sense of entitlement and self-importance, that there are actually two types of it, grandiose

00:00:39.320 and vulnerable, and how the latter can actually underlie seeming cases of anxiety and depression.

00:00:43.680 We then discuss what causes someone to become a narcissist, whether narcissism has increased

00:00:47.460 in younger generations, and when narcissism tips over into outright personality disorder. Keith

00:00:51.800 explains how narcissists are attractive early on in a relationship, but lose their shine

00:00:54.960 over time, and how in a similar manner, narcissists readily emerge as leaders, but then often

00:00:59.080 struggle to hold on to their position and power. We then get in the relationship between narcissism

00:01:03.240 and social media, and how to get the benefits of narcissism, which isn't entirely a bad thing,

00:01:07.400 while mitigating its downsides. Out of the show is over, check out our show notes at

00:01:10.500 aom.is slash narcissism. All right, Keith Campbell, welcome to the show.

00:01:26.420 Thanks for having me.

00:01:27.520 So you are a professor of psychology at the University of Georgia, and you've spent a lot

00:01:31.940 of your career researching and writing about narcissism. How did that happen? How did you end

00:01:36.600 up starting psychology and think, I'm going to study narcissism?

00:01:40.460 Yeah, I have been studying narcissism a good 25, 30 years now since graduate school, and

00:01:47.220 the story isn't as dramatic as you would think. It wasn't some relationship or bad boss or something.

00:01:53.840 Really, I was interested in basic questions of how people think about themselves and how people

00:01:59.820 overestimate their own sense of worth or their own abilities, and we call these self-enhancement

00:02:05.160 effects and social psychology. So a lot of us do it. We think we're more attractive than we are

00:02:10.460 and more humble than we are, and we sort of say we're taller than we are, and we do a lot of things

00:02:15.960 like this. And so I started studying narcissism initially as a way to get at that sort of basic

00:02:21.740 self-enhancement, understand ego. Why are some people more prone to inflate their egos than other

00:02:28.560 people? Why are some people hogging credit and other people more humble? So it was really a basic

00:02:34.640 research question at the beginning, and it just sort of took off.

00:02:38.480 Well, so the word narcissism gets thrown around a lot in our culture. We accuse people of being

00:02:44.200 narcissist all the time. We might accuse a friend. You're being so narcissistic right now. So I think

00:02:48.820 there's a popular idea of what narcissism means. You think a lot about yourself, but as a psychologist

00:02:55.080 and as a researcher, how do you define narcissism?

00:02:58.000 Yeah, you're exactly right. I mean, we use the word, and it usually means something like you're

00:03:03.640 a little selfish, you're being self-centered, you're kind of a jerk, and it's often my ex-boyfriend was 1.00

00:03:09.600 really narcissistic or my boss or whatever. So we use it, but we don't know why. And in psychology, 1.00

00:03:15.700 there's these technical or more technical definitions, and there's really a few different

00:03:20.900 ways to think about narcissism. So the first way is a personality trait, meaning we all have some

00:03:29.540 level of narcissism. Some of us are relatively high. Some of us are relatively low. Most of us

00:03:34.560 are somewhere in the middle. And in terms of that trait of narcissism, it has a couple different forms

00:03:42.040 or faces. What most people that are listening are familiar with is grandiose narcissism. So it's this

00:03:49.280 combination of sort of, I have a sense of entitlement. I'm important. I'm better than you. I'm attractive,

00:03:55.940 but I'm also confident and outgoing and driven. I want to be a leader. I'm really a likable person

00:04:02.920 when you meet me because of my energy and confidence. So it's this more, it's the kind of narcissism we see

00:04:08.860 with actors or politicians, the Tony Stark kind of narcissism. And this other phase of narcissism

00:04:16.980 shares this sense of entitlement and self-importance, but it's much more insecure and vulnerable and

00:04:23.480 easily threatened. And we call this the vulnerable form of narcissism or vulnerable narcissism.

00:04:29.420 And these are folks that are sort of think they're really important, but don't do much. They're a

00:04:34.820 little more introverted. They have little lower self-esteem. They end up in therapy more. They don't

00:04:39.840 end up running the world. They end up sort of seeking help and it's a different form.

00:04:45.480 So we have those two basic traits of narcissism, vulnerable and grandiose. And then to make it

00:04:51.160 even more confusing, there is a clinical or psychiatric disorder known as narcissistic

00:04:57.840 personality disorder or NPD, which is an extreme form of narcissism that is grandiose, but also with

00:05:06.440 some vulnerability. And when that becomes so extreme, it messes up your life. And in significantly,

00:05:12.360 a clinically significant ways, it can be diagnosed as a disorder and treated. And that's relatively

00:05:18.580 rare, like one or 2% of the population.

00:05:22.200 Gotcha. And I'd like to dig in more into narcissistic personality disorder. Do you see a

00:05:26.080 lot in the popular culture about that as well? And you've written a lot about that. So I think

00:05:30.260 the thing to point out is narcissism is a personality trait. It's not a mood. And that's something people

00:05:36.380 often confuse. They kind of throw in these mental health terms, narcissism, depression, anxiety,

00:05:42.480 but narcissism, like depression, anxiety is about mood. Narcissism is about personality.

00:05:47.940 Yeah, absolutely. These are traits, meaning this is sort of how you are. And the way we think about

00:05:53.820 a trait, it's the way you are across time. You know, you're this way now, you're going to be this

00:05:58.740 way in a few years and also across situations. So the way you are at work and the way you are at home,

00:06:03.680 if you're kind of consistent. So people are narcissistic, tend to be narcissistic over

00:06:08.540 time. If you're just narcissistic this afternoon, I think, well, maybe you got into the whiskey and

00:06:13.480 cocaine or something. And if you're narcissistic across situations, it makes sense. If you're only

00:06:19.220 narcissistic at your workplace, but not at home, maybe that's just a job requirement.

00:06:24.800 So to be a personality trait, it has to be sort of general in your life.

00:06:28.440 Okay. So narcissism is a personality trait, but it's a personality trait made up of other

00:06:33.680 personality traits.

00:06:35.680 Absolutely. And that's really true of a lot of these more, it's a complex trait.

00:06:41.060 And it has components of it, of more general traits, which I'm happy to talk about if you want.

00:06:47.400 Yeah, talk about this. I think most people are familiar with the big five,

00:06:50.660 but for those who aren't, what are the big five personality traits and which of those make up

00:06:54.360 narcissism?

00:06:55.900 Yeah. So the big five personality traits are what happened when you look at all the potential

00:07:01.300 personality traits that we have. And, and we can find those in dictionaries or thesauruses

00:07:07.240 and you kind of go, well, let's put those together. How many are there really? And you go, well,

00:07:13.100 there's about five there that kind of hang together. Well, and those five are easily remembered because

00:07:19.540 they spell ocean or canoe. If you spell ocean, which is my preferred way that the first of the big

00:07:25.980 five traits is openness to experience. And this is a combination of being sort of creative and

00:07:31.620 interested in ideas and philosophy. So a lot of people in academics and philosophy, really high

00:07:37.120 in openness, a lot of artists. The next is conscientiousness, which is the trait most associated

00:07:43.420 with work and discipline. And it's made up of sort of discipline and organization, but also

00:07:48.760 industriousness and work ethic. The third of the big five, the E is extroversion. And this is one

00:07:57.360 most people are familiar with meaning sociability, like extroverts like to go out to parties and things,

00:08:02.540 but it also means drive and ambition. Sort of leaders are very extroverted. And this extroversion piece

00:08:10.300 is what you see with grandiose narcissism. That's that sort of drive. And this is why grandiose narcissists

00:08:16.100 are likable is the extroversion. The next in the ocean is A for agreeableness. And agreeableness

00:08:23.620 is a combination of really kind of being polite, following rules, and also being compassionate and

00:08:30.980 kind. And this is something you see with narcissism as well. It's really core to narcissism and a lot of

00:08:37.220 the more toxic traits, but reversed. So what we see with narcissism and psychopathy and other dark

00:08:43.900 traits is high antagonism or low agreeableness. And the final trait in the big five is neuroticism,

00:08:51.420 which sounds bad, but really neuroticism is a combination of anxiety, depression, some hostility.

00:08:58.300 And that's what you see with vulnerable narcissists, a lot of neuroticism. So if you take those big five

00:09:04.700 together and you want to understand grandiose narcissism, you take some antagonism, somebody who's

00:09:10.560 sort of self-centered and mean and entitled, but you take that person say, and you're also really

00:09:15.140 extroverted and driven and charming, and that's your grandiose narcissist. You take that same

00:09:21.060 antagonism and maybe a little bit more suspiciousness and hostility because there's vulnerability and you

00:09:27.120 make that person neurotic, anxious, insecure, and that's vulnerable narcissism. So that's kind of how

00:09:33.420 you put it together with the big five traits. And you mentioned earlier that vulnerable narcissists

00:09:38.540 are more likely to end up in therapy. Is it because of the neuroticism aspect of it?

00:09:43.700 Absolutely. And when you talk to therapists, what happens is they say, yeah, you have a client come

00:09:49.680 in and they have symptoms of, you know, I'm kind of depressed. Things aren't going my way. You know,

00:09:55.140 the world doesn't seem fair and you go, oh, you're, you know, you seem like an anxious, depressed person

00:09:59.780 and you dig in a little bit. And the person also says, well, I'm really smarter than everybody else.

00:10:05.400 And I should be running the show. And a lot of other things that are hard to see in somebody

00:10:11.740 who's depressed. So sometimes vulnerable narcissism is referred to as covert narcissism because it's

00:10:17.460 narcissism that's really hard to see until you press. On the surface, it looks like somebody who's sort

00:10:23.360 of anxious and, you know, George Costanz is the example, you know, we used to give in the old days

00:10:28.880 or the comic book guy from the Simpsons. But somebody on the surface who seems kind of,

00:10:33.440 you know, weak and neurotic, but inside really wants power and status.

00:10:38.200 When someone goes to therapy and they present, say, as like a depressive, like how do clinicians

00:10:44.360 diagnose, like, oh, you actually, this is narcissism. What does that look like for the

00:10:48.320 diagnostics of narcissism? Is it pretty difficult to do?

00:10:52.060 Yeah, it's, I want to be clear. I'm not a clinician. So this is just reading and talking to

00:10:57.720 people. What seems to happen is it takes a while to dig up. You don't really notice it. And in

00:11:05.680 different conversations, you start hitting triggers. So, oh, this is what makes you depressed. Why did

00:11:11.520 you get depressed? Well, I was disrespected. Well, why were you disrespected? Well, people didn't pay

00:11:17.080 attention to me. Did you do anything? Well, no, they should have noticed me.

00:11:21.300 So an example of something like this would be in the, oh, the Elliott shootings in Santa Barbara,

00:11:30.180 where he asks a girl out. She doesn't say anything back. And he goes, I was rejected by that girl. I'm

00:11:37.580 going to take revenge. So it's a very vulnerable thing to do. Most of us, you know, you go, hey,

00:11:42.700 go out with me. Somebody doesn't say anything. You go, well, they probably didn't hear me,

00:11:46.040 you know? And, but if you're more vulnerable and insecure, you, you assume people are out to get

00:11:51.700 you. They're disrespecting you, sliding you. And when a therapist starts seeing that kind of

00:11:56.200 behavior, they go, okay, there's some ego involvement in this depression. It's not just,

00:12:00.980 I'm a bad person. It's like, I'm a good person who's not getting the respect they deserve.

00:12:05.900 If that made sense. Yeah. That makes sense. What about grandiose narcissism? I mean, I guess these,

00:12:10.060 they're the opposite. They have like a thicker skin. They don't. Yes. Yes. Thicker skin.

00:12:15.380 And they sometimes call them thick and thin skin narcissists. With grandiose narcissism,

00:12:20.540 it's often not seen at first because you meet people who are really confident and extroverted

00:12:25.800 and likable. And if you meet people like this in a social situation or in public, like in performance,

00:12:32.460 your initial response is, this is a really confident person. I really like they're good person.

00:12:38.000 And where you start seeing the grandiosity is over time. When there's options for that

00:12:45.140 person to do something that's warm or loving, or, you know, trust, you know, you have a position

00:12:50.920 where you have to trust them. And it turns out, well, they're not that trustworthy or really they

00:12:56.720 don't, they don't care that much about me. They care more about themselves or they're not as

00:13:02.080 interested in me as I am in them. So what you see over time is you see that lack of empathy,

00:13:06.920 that self-centeredness, but it takes a little time. Often it takes a little time because you like

00:13:13.060 the grandiosity at first. Do we know what causes narcissism? Like why are some people more

00:13:17.860 narcissistic than others? Yes. And it's a, it's a combination. So with personality, what we see is

00:13:26.040 a lot of us are genetics and I'm talking about 50%, maybe a little more as heritable in any of our

00:13:33.020 traits. So it comes from our ancestry. Doesn't mean if your parents are narcissists, you're doomed to be a

00:13:39.360 narcissist or anything, but there is that genetic sort of association. Parenting matters, but it

00:13:45.500 doesn't matter as much as most people think. With grandiose narcissists, you see parents that said,

00:13:51.840 hey, you're special, put them, put the kid on a pedestal. We're very permissive. And with vulnerable

00:13:57.860 narcissists, you see the parenting that you see with a lot of, you know, more negative psychological

00:14:02.840 outcomes. So you see parents who are more cold and abusive that are, you know, a little more,

00:14:07.820 little traumatic, more traumatic for the kid. And the other piece with narcissism is what we call

00:14:15.940 non-shared family environment in the research, but really it's just the random stuff that happens to

00:14:21.780 you growing up. So you grow up and maybe one kid ends up, you know, with a bunch of really nice

00:14:27.540 friends and a nice group and develops really warm and loving relationships. And another group ends up

00:14:33.840 with a little more high status, competitive group of friends and becomes a little more

00:14:38.060 self-promoting and self-centered just to fit in with the friend group. And that leads to more

00:14:44.040 narcissism later on. So it's complex. There's no single path, but there are some things that we know

00:14:49.880 lead to it. Well, you also, in the book, you mentioned culture can also have an influence as

00:14:54.360 well. I think the comparison between Eastern and Western cultures where Western cultures tend to be

00:14:59.360 more narcissistic compared to Eastern cultures. Oh, oh, for sure. There are cultural differences 1.00

00:15:05.620 across cultures. So it's sort of that classic, you know, East and West difference. And you see that

00:15:12.020 at the continent level, they even have data looking at East and West Germany, you know, before and after

00:15:18.000 the breakup where you saw lower narcissism, East Germany, that was communist versus West Germany.

00:15:23.080 Another thing you see culturally is the shift towards cities, smaller family sizes, more competitive

00:15:31.320 workplaces. And we see that in China pretty clearly, but some data in the U.S. as well, that as

00:15:37.520 societies become more urbanized, we have smaller families, less long-term trusting relationships,

00:15:43.560 everybody's hustling to build a brand, to get attention, to fight their way through the economic

00:15:49.240 system. There's just more pull for narcissism. And there's also differences across generations

00:15:55.240 as well. I mean, a couple of years ago, actually more than a couple of years ago, I think it was

00:15:58.960 a decade ago, you wrote a book with Gene Twinge, The Narcissism Epidemic, talking about the increase

00:16:05.100 we're seeing in narcissism. Tell us about that. I mean, what is the state of narcissism? Is there,

00:16:09.160 can we see a difference in narcissism from one generation to the next?

00:16:12.880 Yes. And it's unfortunately, well, fortunately or not, it's more complicated. So Gene and I wrote

00:16:18.160 The Narcissism Epidemic in 08, I think, or 09, is right before the Great Financial Crisis. And what

00:16:26.160 we had was this, it was kind of the height of the Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian, narcissistic,

00:16:32.600 grandiose era. And we found real increases in narcissism in college students, you know, from the

00:16:39.660 80s to then. And what happened since then is we had the Great Financial Crisis kick in,

00:16:46.420 and the job market collapse. And we saw narcissism start to drop with a lot of young people.

00:16:53.920 They just didn't, I mean, I think vulnerable narcissism's gone up. I don't have really good

00:16:57.700 data on that. But the grandiose narcissism seems to have gone down because of the job market in large

00:17:05.040 parts. And right now with the pandemic, it's really hard to know what's going on. We're seeing lots of

00:17:10.560 change, you know, mental health decreases, lack of trust in society. So it's hard to know what's

00:17:16.800 going on in this cultural stew. But in general, more individualistic societies, more low-trust

00:17:23.040 societies, you're going to get more narcissism. I'm curious, as a researcher, how do you figure

00:17:27.940 that stuff out? Like, how do you figure out narcissism on a scale that large? Like, what do you-

00:17:32.780 Yeah, it's really challenging because it's how do you find data? So what we did was we would look at

00:17:40.420 every single person who'd measured narcissism, we get the mean scores, and we collect those. And what

00:17:46.420 we call a cross-temporal meta-analysis, which is a fancy way of saying is we're looking at all the

00:17:51.540 studies across time, and we'd see if those means are increasing or decreasing. Ideally, what you have

00:17:58.720 is you have these, you know, national data sets that have these data, but we just don't have that

00:18:03.660 for narcissism. So we have to go and look at it. And then if you want to look at things like

00:18:10.040 narcissism culturally, which is a little different question, you have to figure out what to look at.

00:18:14.520 We'd look at things like, you know, what people are naming their children, you know, what are people

00:18:20.020 buying? There's a lot of other things you can look at. Yeah, I've heard song lyrics is one thing you

00:18:25.140 can look at, like the instances of I in song lyrics has gone up, and then the instances of you have

00:18:30.640 gone down. Yeah, song lyrics, books, there's lots of things that have changed. And a lot of those in

00:18:36.500 our society are in the direction of individualism. We're just in a, we're in a very individualistic

00:18:41.920 society right now. Okay, so let's recap. I think it's, we did a good breakdown broadly of what

00:18:47.160 narcissism is. It's a personality trait. Everyone is narcissistic to some extent or another. You might be

00:18:53.100 narcissistic in some instances, but not in others. There's two types of narcissism. There's the

00:18:57.400 grandiose narcissism, which I think everyone is familiar with. And I think that's kind of the

00:19:01.040 popular idea of what a narcissist is. But there's also that vulnerable narcissist where they think

00:19:06.760 they're the center of the world, but they don't really do anything to promote themselves. But they

00:19:10.780 just feel like people, like they're, they feel like the world is obligated to meet their needs and

00:19:15.560 just know about it. And they get really upset when that doesn't happen. Would that be a fair

00:19:19.600 summation? Yes, slighted. And that's that vulnerability piece. It's like, they're easily

00:19:23.800 threatened because they, they, they had, they think the world is, they think the world owes

00:19:29.840 them something, but they haven't been out there fighting enough to have a thick skin. Okay. So

00:19:34.560 that's a personality trait. Everyone can experience that to some extent or another, but then you

00:19:38.380 mentioned earlier that there is a clinical diagnosis called narcissistic personality disorder.

00:19:44.740 So when does narcissism tip over into a disorder and how do psychologists figure that out?

00:19:50.440 Yes. So personality is designed to be ideally sort of flexible. So I have one personality when I'm at

00:20:01.480 work, maybe I have to be more directive. I have to be an authority. I'm in charge. I might have another

00:20:06.620 personality when I'm with my kids. It's not totally different, but I'm going to, I'm going to, my,

00:20:11.520 it's going to go up and down. I'm going to be flexible depending on my, my environment. Well,

00:20:17.200 what happens with personality with some people is it can be, it can get sort of extreme and it can be

00:20:23.280 inflexible so that my narcissism, when I'm at work, it's like, Hey, let's just talk about me.

00:20:31.820 When I'm with my wife, I'm like, yeah, I hear, I hear that, but let's talk about my day.

00:20:37.140 When I'm with my kids, I'm like, you know what? I'd love to pick you up, honey, but I've got the golf

00:20:41.180 clubs in the back of the Mercedes and I just don't have room for you. And maybe you can just

00:20:45.280 take an Uber to the birthday party. And so what happens is your own ego, because it's so extreme

00:20:52.540 and it's not flexible enough, it starts to interfere with your life. So then what a clinical psychologist

00:20:59.900 or psychiatrist has to do is say, well, is this really messing you up in a couple of different ways?

00:21:05.300 And one of the ways narcissism really seems to affect people as relationships. So your narcissism,

00:21:12.580 you might feel good interpersonally. You might not be depressed, but your, your wife or your husband

00:21:17.760 might be suffering. Your kids might be suffering. Your, your employees might be suffering. So

00:21:23.400 one issue is your relationships could be a problem. And so narcissism is implicated in a lot of divorce.

00:21:29.120 It could be that you're making poor decisions at work because you won't take feedback. So you think

00:21:34.500 you're so smart. People are saying you're making a mistake and you're like, no, I'm in charge here,

00:21:38.820 or you want the opportunity for glory and you take risks. So it's destroying your work.

00:21:43.900 So if a clinician says, you know, it's messing you up in a couple areas, it's extreme and inflexible.

00:21:48.680 You've been this way for a long time. It's not just, you know, some drug you're on. It's not a

00:21:54.280 it's not a brain tumor. It's a personality disorder and let's start to treat it. So that that's the

00:22:00.120 process. And that's tricky because with a lot of mental health diagnoses, like depression,

00:22:06.420 the cue is like, is this impairing your life? That's how it's like sadness is impairing your

00:22:10.860 life to like over a long period of time. But it sounds like a narcissism, it could be like the

00:22:15.340 narcissist life isn't being impaired, but other people around them, their, their life's miserable.

00:22:21.500 Yes. And, and it's has the other set of disorders that's somewhat similar are addictive

00:22:27.500 disorders, where you can have people with addictions and say, you know, it's sort of

00:22:31.420 working for me, but other people are suffering, but yeah, it's set up in a bad way in terms of

00:22:38.540 treatment seeking. And this is a challenge. So if I'm narcissistic and the people really suffering

00:22:43.560 from my narcissism or my kids, when I go into therapy and it gets challenging and the therapist

00:22:49.560 is like, or the psychiatrist is like, dude, let's start thinking about who you really are. I go,

00:22:53.800 you know what? I'm out of here. I don't want to do this. And so that is the challenge with,

00:22:58.260 with narcissism and psychotherapy is they just won't stick with it because they're not suffering

00:23:03.420 enough. Yeah. Or even just getting into therapy. Like, how do you, you've got a problem. Like,

00:23:07.700 no, I don't. Absolutely. I mean, that's part of that defensiveness. I'm not the problem.

00:23:13.000 You, everyone else is the problem. So it's hard to get people into therapy who are narcissistic.

00:23:17.980 It's hard to, it's hard to keep them in therapy because the nature of the disorder is the person

00:23:22.640 suffering is often not the narcissist or if they are, it's sort of, they're suffering and, you know,

00:23:27.780 it's a second order effects of their own egos. It's not the first order effects.

00:23:32.580 Gotcha. So, okay. And just to be clear, I think it's an important distinction. Narcissistic

00:23:35.560 personality disorder is a clinical diagnosis. Like you can't just accuse someone of narcissistic

00:23:41.600 personality disorder willy nilly. Like this is something that has to be probably diagnosed by an

00:23:46.000 expert. Yes, it should be diagnosed. And I don't, I don't go around labeling people with NPD. I,

00:23:51.660 you know, you, you, there's processes for doing this technically.

00:23:55.900 Gotcha. Yeah. I think that goes to, for any type of mental health issue, like ADHD, depression,

00:24:01.400 anxiety, you might, you might think you haven't, you'd always go find to make sure you do.

00:24:06.240 And especially in, you know, the challenge you, and you mentioned this earlier is a lot of these,

00:24:10.860 these disorders are also normal conditions. So if somebody says, dude, I'm really anxious. Well,

00:24:16.100 does that mean I'm anxious or does that mean I have generalized anxiety disorder, man? I'm scared.

00:24:21.560 I'm scared of the snakes. Am I, am I scared of snakes like a normal person? Or do I have a snake

00:24:25.980 phobia? So a lot of these conditions kind of ride a line between normal and, you know, psychiatric,

00:24:33.580 and it's not a very clear line in a lot of cases. We're going to take a quick break for your words

00:24:39.500 from our sponsors. And now back to the show. So the first part of the book, you describe narcissism,

00:24:46.660 then the rest of the book, you discuss kind of its effects on different aspects of our lives.

00:24:52.040 We mentioned relationships. That seems like narcissism has the biggest impact on relationships.

00:24:56.060 Let's dig deeper in there. What does the research say about narcissism and relationships?

00:25:01.500 Well, it's, it's complex in an interesting way. So what you find is that the effect of narcissism

00:25:09.080 and relationships is different at the early stages than in the committed stages.

00:25:13.420 So in early parts of relationships, let's say you're dating, typical American dating relationships

00:25:20.760 with the young people, people who are narcissistic are going to be attractive when you first meet

00:25:26.020 them. They're going to be likable. They're likable in 30 second, you know, movie clips. They're going

00:25:31.740 to seem confident and they're going to be very effective at dating. They're going to have more dates.

00:25:36.640 They're going to have more connections on social media. They're going to have, you know,

00:25:39.780 they're going to date more quickly. They get lots of things. So in the beginning of relationships,

00:25:44.420 narcissism is really good for starting relationships. And when people start relationships

00:25:48.640 with grandiose narcissists, they report that those relationships are kind of fun at first

00:25:53.320 because they're exciting. So what happens though, over time is that relationships,

00:25:59.800 and this isn't always the case, but often what people want is they want a more committed or

00:26:05.240 emotionally intimate relationship. And so there's a sort of a transition in relationships from,

00:26:11.480 hey, we're having fun. This is dating to, hey, let's get to know each other. Let's have something

00:26:15.320 more committed. Maybe let's talk about something more permanent. In that transition, narcissism falls

00:26:21.500 apart because what you see with narcissism is not so much an interest in committed or warm or

00:26:27.060 empathetic relationships, but instead you see the narcissist maybe being a little bit unfaithful,

00:26:32.880 being a little uncontrolled, a little bit controlling, being a little materialistic,

00:26:37.280 treating you like a prop or a trophy. You see a lot of negative behaviors come up over time,

00:26:41.840 sometimes abuse, sometimes violence. So the relationships often will start off really strong

00:26:48.480 with grandiose narcissists, but over time they tend to fall apart and they get really, really bad.

00:26:53.520 So that there's just a very interesting pattern. And what happens is people end up dating lots of

00:27:01.220 narcissists because of this, or some people do, and it can be really bad. So that's the short version,

00:27:06.860 medium short version. Yeah. That's interesting. On the grandiose narcissist, you also highlight

00:27:11.820 research that they typically tend to be more attractive physically because they invest more

00:27:17.360 in their physical attractiveness. They're going to buy nice clothes, work out, et cetera.

00:27:22.260 Yeah. That's a great point. There's some really interesting research where they did these studies

00:27:27.620 like, ah, these grandiose narcissists, and these men and women are more attractive. Why is it? And

00:27:33.540 one of my colleagues did a study where he brought people in and had them shave their beards,

00:27:38.980 take their makeup off, and just did just normal facial shots. You can't see any difference. It's just

00:27:43.980 people who are narcissistic, want to be attractive. They want to be attracted, people attracted to them,

00:27:51.060 and they'll put effort into it. And it's effective. Right. But the issue is later on,

00:27:56.020 the person in the relationship discovers, well, this person doesn't really think too much about me,

00:27:59.820 and this is not going to go anywhere. Right. If your job as the narcissist partner is to make the

00:28:04.740 narcissist look good, that can be exciting for a little while, but it gets boring very quickly.

00:28:09.460 What about vulnerable narcissists in relationship? What does that look like?

00:28:13.680 It's a different deal because vulnerable narcissists are not necessarily attractive. They're not really

00:28:18.800 attractive people as a rule because they're, well, again, a little neurotic, a little introverted.

00:28:24.760 It's not an attractive thing. What happens, and this is less research, so it's a little bit,

00:28:31.140 this is just from talking to people. As you start a relationship, sometimes it's a caregiving

00:28:35.760 relationship where I'm dating this person. They're a little weak. They're a little neurotic.

00:28:39.480 Maybe I'm taking care of them. And I assume once I take care of them, they will be more grateful and

00:28:46.720 loving to me. So I date somebody who's a vulnerable narcissist. I'm really nice to them. I go, well,

00:28:50.920 they're going to be less depressed pretty soon, and then we're going to be close. Well, once they're

00:28:54.600 less depressed, it turns out they're kind of a narcissistic jerk. So you get rid of the neuroticism, 1.00

00:29:00.000 but you haven't taken care of the disagreeableness, and now you have kind of a jerk as a partner. 1.00

00:29:04.860 Okay. So, yeah. So it sounds like narcissism in relationships, it could be good in the 1.00

00:29:09.440 beginning, but slowly fades away.

00:29:11.620 It's not, yeah, it's not a good recipe. I said this once, I said, except on a summer fling,

00:29:18.020 and then it was a newspaper headline that said, you know, Dr. Campbell tells people to have flings

00:29:23.080 with narcissists. So I'm not saying that. I'm just saying life is complicated. If you're going to

00:29:28.440 have a relationship with a narcissist, make sure it's short-term and it's on summer, over summer.

00:29:33.040 What about narcissism and leadership? What does the research say there?

00:29:37.080 That's another really complicated area. And narcissism, again, grandiose narcissism seems

00:29:42.700 to really fit with leadership. And we see this in a lot of research now. We see that narcissists

00:29:50.520 are good at emerging as leaders, which means that, hey, if we have a group of 10 people,

00:29:57.380 the narcissist is more likely to become the leader. And this works at, you know, works in family

00:30:02.660 businesses. It works in companies. We just see the people who are more, it works in assessment

00:30:07.920 centers, you know, with smart people looking for leaders. People are grandiose, will gravitate

00:30:12.520 towards leadership because they want it and they seem confident. So you find narcissists emerge as

00:30:20.160 leaders. The challenge is, how are narcissists once they get there? And their narcissism is really a

00:30:28.360 double-edged sword. People who are narcissistic can do big, risky things. They tend to take public risks.

00:30:36.820 When those risks as leaders work and they can take credit for it, everyone thinks they're a hero.

00:30:42.600 And when those risks fail, they try to blame other people and they look really bad. And people say,

00:30:51.720 why were you so stupid to believe that Theranos woman? So it really depends on the outcome. But 1.00

00:30:58.000 what you see is this big risk-taking and it can go either way, but very volatile leadership typically

00:31:04.020 with more grandiose leaders. Now, we had Brad Owens on the podcast. He's a professor of business

00:31:10.800 ethics at BYU. And he's done a lot of research on narcissism and humility and leadership. And I

00:31:15.260 think he found the same thing. Narcissists tend to emerge as leaders faster, but in the long run,

00:31:21.080 they do poorly as leaders because of those, the grandiosity and whatnot.

00:31:26.240 Yes. The only, the exception to that is if they can, every once in a while, they'll just hit it out

00:31:32.140 of the park. So I can tell you a hundred stories of narcissists who were brought in and destroyed

00:31:37.320 everything and were then drummed out. And, but every once in a while, they can, they can just

00:31:44.020 get lucky. And then they just write books about it. I mean, there's a great, one of the great books

00:31:48.760 on Larry Ellison is called the, the, the difference between God and Larry Ellison is the title of the

00:31:56.580 book, something like that. And then the subtitle is, you know, God doesn't think he's Larry Ellison.

00:32:01.300 The CEO of Oracle should have mentioned that, but he's very narcissistic character and he's done

00:32:07.080 extremely well as a business person and doesn't seem like a very likable guy, but I bet I'd have

00:32:12.400 a great time hanging out with this, you know, collection of whatever he's going to show me.

00:32:17.040 So it can work either way. It's not always bad, but it can go really bad. And humility is something

00:32:23.900 I would rather have in later. And what is, what about vulnerable narcissism and leadership? Do they

00:32:28.820 typically emerge as leaders or no, they're just going to be kind of wallowing there? Like I would,

00:32:32.620 I should be the leader, but no one, no one recognizes me. Yes. You're a hundred percent right.

00:32:38.320 And, and when they do get into leadership, vulnerability is a very bad trait in a leader

00:32:44.300 because leaders who don't have thick skin will get to, you know, cause once you're a leader,

00:32:49.500 everyone's taking shots at you. It's just like being famous. It's just like, you know, anybody who puts

00:32:54.100 their head out there is going to have people taking shots at it. And vulnerable leaders who have

00:32:58.480 power, they can be real dangerous because when their ego gets wounded, they can, they can lash 0.82

00:33:03.640 out and thoughtless ways and hurt a lot of people. So I think vulnerability to leaders are a real

00:33:09.900 mistake. I can deal with, you know, the, the standard, you know, grandiose narcissist psychopaths 0.94

00:33:15.220 we have, but their vulnerability, they can be dangerous in unpredictable ways, not just predictable

00:33:20.220 ways. So I think a lot of us, we typically associate the increase in narcissism with social media.

00:33:25.320 That's kind of, it feels like that. Okay. This, we have this platform where it encourages

00:33:29.520 self-promotion. What does the research say about narcissism and social media?

00:33:34.220 It's, it's one of those things. It's a little bit complicated at first. I thought, well,

00:33:40.340 everybody gets on social media is going to become more narcissistic. And maybe that happened a little

00:33:45.260 bit, but it doesn't seem that way. What it seems to be are that people who are narcissistic or

00:33:51.440 grandiose do very well on social media. They have more friends on Facebook, more followers on

00:33:57.380 Twitter. They just tend to have bigger social media networks on all the accounts. So if you open up your

00:34:03.320 social media account, look at all your people you're following, you're going to see more narcissism

00:34:07.520 than really exists. And social media seems to be good at reinforcing narcissism. So people who are

00:34:15.040 narcissistic can use social media to get attention and that will make their narcissism

00:34:20.260 survive or inflate or whatever. So it's a way of maintaining narcissism, but it doesn't seem to be

00:34:27.980 making narcissists. It's in fact, it seems to make people a little bit depressed, but that's another

00:34:33.740 topic. It seems more, it's a tool for people who are narcissistic to self-promote and it works well for

00:34:40.480 them. Okay. So, so it's, it's social media self-selects for narcissists, basically. That's why it seems like

00:34:45.380 everyone's a narcissist. Okay. Yes. And I thought it was interesting. Some of the, the research being done

00:34:50.200 right now, it's, it's, again, it's kind of speculative right now, but it's interesting that

00:34:53.200 you can actually look at someone's social media postings and figure out if they're higher on

00:34:59.240 narcissism than others. Like the, the amount of selfies being taken is possibly a, a sign that

00:35:05.400 someone's narcissistic. Yeah, it's really, it's really interesting. So, you know, we started,

00:35:11.540 I started doing this with a student and maybe it's almost been 10 years ago. We were doing back in the

00:35:16.640 day was we'd look at student. This is when undergraduates had Facebook and no one else

00:35:21.020 had social media. And we'd look at their Facebook pages and code them. And we'd use that to predict

00:35:26.420 narcissism. We're like, yeah, we could do this pretty well. It's, it was very laborious and old

00:35:31.400 fashioned. And about three or four years ago, people started using more machine learning to start

00:35:38.580 scraping websites and using things like likes of products or other information on there to predict

00:35:44.340 personality. Some of this, you know, if you've heard about the Cambridge Analytica scandal,

00:35:49.720 that's what they were doing. And that turns out to work pretty well, but not great. So you can

00:35:55.760 detect narcissism, you know, maybe 0.2, 0.3 correlations from some sort of machine learning

00:36:01.740 would be my guess, but it's not perfect. And it's not a secret pathway into people's lives.

00:36:07.560 If that makes sense. It's not like a window into their soul.

00:36:10.720 No, yeah, that makes sense. And one of the things that came out of that research

00:36:14.940 is that narcissists, not only do they take more selfies, but they actually like when other people

00:36:21.200 take selfies and post selfies, which is interesting. Cause like, you know, when I see someone post a

00:36:24.960 selfie, it kind of makes me feel like I experienced some sort of like secondhand embarrassment. I'm like,

00:36:29.040 wow, that's why would you, but there's people who really are really into that. They're like,

00:36:32.220 yeah, that's great. Keep doing that.

00:36:33.920 No, I mean, that's where I love personality because people are just wired differently.

00:36:37.580 And when I would take selfies, I, it would, it would horrify me. I'm like, I can't,

00:36:42.460 I mean, who puts a picture of themselves? This is so wrong. It was just, it's just how I wasn't

00:36:47.720 raised that way. And I'm so, I'm sort of neurotic and I'm like, God, I look so horrible in this

00:36:52.420 picture. I couldn't, couldn't do it. People are narcissistic. It's pretty easy. It's like,

00:36:57.020 Hey, I look good. Let's look at everyone else. Look good. And you know, I'll look good alone.

00:37:01.740 I'll do more selfies with my own body. So it's more comfort in doing it and they're cool with it.

00:37:06.980 Yeah. So people are just different. Yeah. People are like, I, uh, I've think I've taken

00:37:10.800 one selfie, like where I've actually held the camera and like, and it made me, and I never

00:37:15.060 wanted to do it again. So if I have to take a picture, I hand the camera to someone else,

00:37:18.960 like, you take the picture. And, and, and it's funny whenever I see people take selfies in public,

00:37:24.040 I look away. It's like, like, like we're in like the gym, the locker room, like, okay,

00:37:29.120 this is some kind of weird private experience and I shouldn't be looking at it.

00:37:32.400 And that's just me. That's it's a year from a, from a different culture and you're wired a little

00:37:38.000 differently. And if you were from the modern, you know, digital culture and you were a little

00:37:42.120 narcissistic, you'd think like, God, I am so grateful to be born in the era where I could

00:37:47.040 take pictures of myself all the time. Imagine those poor, you know, those poor Gen X kids that 1.00

00:37:51.540 didn't even have cameras. Uh, so we, we talk about grandiose narcissism in social media. Do we know

00:37:56.860 how vulnerable narcissists use social media? We have data on it and it's a lot less data.

00:38:03.840 So it's not as clear. And what it looks like is there's a lot more struggle and insecurity sort of

00:38:11.100 like, you know, we were just talking about people are vulnerable. Don't feel as they want to put the

00:38:15.300 selfies out there. They want to get liked, but they don't feel really good about it. So they spend

00:38:20.500 more time waffling back and forth. And it's not necessarily a fun, a fun process. And you can talk

00:38:26.500 to some Instagram stars. I don't know, maybe you have that you look at their Instagram and you're

00:38:31.320 like, Oh my God, this person must be the most confident. They just knocked this shot off, just

00:38:35.700 hanging in Dubai. And when you talk to them, it turns out they spent a day doing that shot.

00:38:42.560 They, they didn't sleep for a day or two worried about how they look. So there's a lot of

00:38:46.780 vulnerability, but you don't pick it up in the pictures. Yeah. Those are some of my favorite

00:38:50.120 articles that come out where you have some journalist that goes into these like influencer houses where they

00:38:55.420 all live together and kind of see what it's like. And yeah, it's, it's a lot, it's a lot more going

00:39:00.500 on than you think a lot of anxiety and neuroticism and, and just being anxious about how things are

00:39:06.660 going to be received. And they spend a lot of time on this stuff. Yeah. I think that the real,

00:39:11.940 the real celebrity culture, and I was just up in a, I was just up doing a celebrity podcast last week

00:39:17.780 in LA. It was really fun, but that culture, there's a lot of anxiety about performance because it's so

00:39:23.700 competitive, you know, it's just so brutally competitive that it's not as fun as it looks.

00:39:29.660 And another related to this idea of narcissism and digital technology, narcissism can also help

00:39:35.040 explain the phenomenon of trolling. How can narcissism help, help us understand that?

00:39:40.260 Oh yeah. So trolling, you know, the idea on social media is just, you know, putting out bait to see if

00:39:46.560 you can get people to get upset or riled up about it. People looked at that with trolling and other

00:39:52.860 dark traits and the traits that really seem to predict trolling are narcissism, some psychopathy

00:39:58.100 and sadism, which is basically just, I like to, I enjoy watching people suffer. So there's some

00:40:04.760 narcissism and trolling, and there's also just some plain old meanness, but it's not a, it's not a,

00:40:10.860 it's not people, it's not fun love. It's not a loving thing. Loving people do. It's a, it's a little

00:40:17.660 bit darker. And is that situational? Like, does that only happen on social media or is this carry

00:40:23.580 over to other aspects of life? Because they are personality traits. These things generally will

00:40:28.320 carry across situations because they are traits, but they'll come out in different forms. And,

00:40:35.260 you know, somebody who's a great troll would be, you know, somebody like Elon Musk, who's, who 0.89

00:40:39.980 comes across as a, you know, narcissistic, but he's a, he comes across as also what we call a trickster 0.78

00:40:46.680 figure, you know, a guy who's kind of a joker or a trickster. And those figures are interesting ones

00:40:53.480 and that they're often very creative. So they, they, they can seem narcissistic, but they're also

00:40:58.960 kind of interesting and creative and not enough research on that type of troll.

00:41:04.760 So listening to you speak about narcissism, I think we typically focus on the downsides. We'll

00:41:10.880 talk about that here in a bit, but I mean, it does sound like there's some upsides to being

00:41:14.020 narcissistic on occasion in the realm of relationships. If you spend more time on how

00:41:19.060 you present yourself and you put yourself out there more, you're more likely to get in a

00:41:23.840 relationship or even like in the job hunt, right? You have to put yourself out there to, to be

00:41:28.760 considered for a promotion or a raise or something. So how can you use, get the benefits of

00:41:34.200 narcissism without the downsides? Yeah. I try to look at narcissism and I try to look at most

00:41:40.080 things as a trade-off because that's how nature is. If something was just always bad all the time,

00:41:45.680 we just wouldn't really have it so much. So most of our personality traits have some benefits at some

00:41:51.680 point and narcissism is no exception. And I think narcissism works really well in dating. It works

00:41:57.360 really well. Public speaking works really well on leadership works really well in self-promotion,

00:42:01.960 maybe marketing, maybe competition, you know, walking into a boxing match. So what you can do

00:42:08.140 is you say, well, let's look at the narcissist doing that. And maybe I can use some of that swagger,

00:42:13.940 but I'll just do it in limited domains. So maybe I'll have swagger when I walk into the boxing,

00:42:19.640 you know, boxing ring, but I'm not going to carry that home with my kids. Or maybe I'll have the

00:42:25.200 confidence when I walk on stage instead of going, I'm going to fail. I'm going to say, yeah,

00:42:29.200 I got this one and try to feel really positive about it and just see how it goes. So I think

00:42:35.220 there's a lot to learn from watching, especially the more grandiose, the more grandiose people and

00:42:40.620 how they can really succeed in life and imitating some of that stuff, but not, not starting to

00:42:46.540 believe your own hype because you're just not that big of a deal. So let's say someone's listening

00:42:51.180 to this and they're thinking, well, maybe I'm, maybe I'm more narcissistic than I need to be.

00:42:54.440 And it is affecting my relationships. We're not talking a narcissistic personality disorder.

00:42:59.160 We're just talking, you're higher in narcissism than you like, and you're seeing that it's

00:43:02.160 affecting your relationships. Is it possible to tamp that down?

00:43:06.800 Yes. I think one thing we've learned in, in personality science in the last 10 years,

00:43:12.420 I think very clearly is that personality can change and to change, you need to identify what it is

00:43:18.700 you want to change and then, and then make an effort over time. What I would suggest to people

00:43:24.500 is say, look, I'm a little narcissistic. I would say, what is it specifically that's really messing

00:43:29.620 you up? Is it, is it the way you treat your, you know, is the way you treat your, your relationship

00:43:35.040 partner? Is it something at work? Is the way you relate to people and figure out what that is and

00:43:41.120 say, look, I'm going to address that one specific behavior. You don't have to change your

00:43:44.500 whole personality. Don't just try to do one thing. So for one example I have, and I'm not

00:43:51.180 super narcissistic, but I'm really extroverted and I have a tendency to talk over people. I'll go to

00:43:56.900 conferences and I'll start talking. I'll get real excited and just drown people out. And so I go,

00:44:03.340 well, this is my tendency. I look a little bit self-centered because I am. So I'm going to really

00:44:08.200 just, every time I talk to people, I'm going to put in breaks. So I give them a chance to talk

00:44:13.140 and it's a practice. So my suggestion to people is if you find things like that, just go, Hey,

00:44:19.100 it's something I would rather not do so much. It's not benefiting me. What could I do to make

00:44:23.660 a little better, little simple thing like that? And this, this, how we broke things down with

00:44:28.320 narcissism, the difference between grandiose and vulnerable and the personality traits that are

00:44:33.200 involved in each one that can help you pinpoint what you need to work on. So if you're more of a

00:44:36.300 grandiose narcissist, you might need to tamp down the extraversion a bit. Let other people have the 0.99

00:44:42.300 limelight. If you're a vulnerable narcissist, I imagine the thing you got to tackle there is the

00:44:46.100 neuroticism or the anxiety. Yes. It's the neuroticism. How do you do that? You know,

00:44:50.440 exercise, meditation, yoga, you know, walks, SSRIs, you know, there's, there's things you do to try to

00:44:57.900 get rid of that anxiety or depression in your life that can be helpful that way. And then the,

00:45:03.760 then the other key piece is that antagonism. And that could be practice of, you know, compassion,

00:45:09.960 you know, there's compassion meditations you can do that, you know, treat everybody like they're

00:45:14.760 your mother in a past life. I mean, that's an old one, but, but there are different practices that

00:45:19.780 you can, you know, be nice to puppies, whatever it is, just find something and focus on that and see

00:45:25.560 if you can make some headway that way. Yeah. Focus on other people, not you. Yes. The key. Yeah.

00:45:31.040 And you gotta be careful of the meditation. I've seen research lately saying that certain types of

00:45:34.800 meditation can actually make you more narcissistic. That is really an interesting question because

00:45:40.920 we have some, some research in ayahuasca that we've been looking at too. And I, I think there's

00:45:46.180 a challenge in the meditation. It's the energy-based practices, which are kind of what I do. Some of the

00:45:52.620 more energy-based yoga practices that are associated with narcissism. What happens is people have an

00:45:58.840 enlightenment experience and they go, okay, I'm enlightened now. Well, I guess I'm a guru. I'm

00:46:02.780 going to go get some followers. So I don't think those practices are the best for grandiosity. I

00:46:09.820 think they're good for vulnerability and neuroticism, but for grandiosity, they can be a real mixed bag

00:46:15.740 and, you know, a lot of narcissistic gurus. Right. If you're grandiose, you want to do the loving

00:46:21.100 kindness or the compassion. Loving kindness would be what I would suggest. That's the prescription.

00:46:25.920 What about narcissistic personality disorder? I've read things that it's really hard to treat and

00:46:30.320 sometimes it seems like it's impossible to treat. Is that, is that true? It can be, but okay. So

00:46:36.440 we don't have the gold standard clinical trial because it's never been done. But if you look

00:46:44.440 across all the different clinical trials where they've looked at narcissism and these aren't always

00:46:49.520 perfect studies, what you find is that narcissists and narcissism can be changed. The big challenge is

00:46:56.800 keeping people in therapy and getting people to therapy. But if people stick with it, it seems to

00:47:05.160 be possible to change. So it's really a challenge of getting people in there and finding a therapist

00:47:12.000 who can deal with people who are narcissistic. And this is a challenge in finding a therapy that fits

00:47:16.620 the person. Okay. So we talked about reducing narcissism in yourself. How do you handle someone?

00:47:21.360 If you have someone in your life who's a narcissist, whether that's a spouse, a boss, a friend,

00:47:26.680 any tips there as you can keep maintaining the relationship?

00:47:30.580 It depends on how tied you are with the person. And one, I guess, no matter what the relationship is,

00:47:37.880 if you're dealing with somebody you think is really narcissistic, it's good to find some support,

00:47:42.040 find some other people that agree with you so that if you get in a conflict, the person can't,

00:47:47.640 I mean, they'd use the term gaslighting, but basically people who are narcissistic can make

00:47:52.740 you think you're crazy. So you get some social support around you, take notes about things,

00:47:58.020 start understanding the situation in a very stable and solid and secure way in case there's a conflict.

00:48:05.380 And then you have to deal with whatever conflict comes up. So it could be you have a narcissistic boss

00:48:10.380 that's stealing credit from you. And then you go, how do I handle this? Do I give them the credit and

00:48:15.640 then try to get them promoted out? Do I try to get some of the credit? Do I try to get another boss?

00:48:21.260 It just depends on what the situation is, but I'm like, get a support network first and get outside

00:48:29.080 help if you can. Yeah. Gotcha. Well, Keith, this has been a great conversation. Is there some place

00:48:34.180 people can go to learn more about the book and your work? Yeah. My website, wkeithcampbell.com.

00:48:39.340 It's not great. It's got some stuff. Book could be found anywhere. And I'm sometimes on Twitter

00:48:45.180 at wkeithcampbell. All right. Well, Keith Campbell, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:48:49.780 Oh, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

00:48:53.320 My guest today was wkeithcampbell. He's the author of the book,

00:48:55.780 The New Science of Narcissism. It's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find

00:48:59.660 more information about his work at his website, wkeithcampbell.com. Also check out our show

00:49:03.680 notes at aom.is slash narcissism, where you find links to resources. We can delve deeper into this

00:49:07.800 topic. Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Make sure to check out our website

00:49:18.860 at artofmanliness.com, where you can find our podcast archives, as well as thousands of articles

00:49:22.400 around the years about pretty much anything you can think of. And if you'd like to enjoy ad-free

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00:49:42.340 Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member who you think we get something out

00:49:45.600 of it. As always, thank you for the continued support. Until next time, this is Brett McKay,

00:49:48.500 reminding you to not only listen to the AOM podcast, but put what you've heard into action.

00:50:02.540 Bye-bye.

00:50:03.060 Bye-bye.

00:50:09.220 Bye-bye.

00:50:10.540 Bye-bye.

The Art of Manliness - January 12, 2022

The New Science of Narcissism

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