ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR FINAL PROJECT

TOPIC

Millennial are more Narcissistic than Their Parents

GROUP 3 MEMBERS

Asharib Aftab (17L-4932)

Maria Fatima Toor (17L-4903)

SUBMITTED TO

Dr. Hamid Hassan

SUBMITTAL DATE

May, 3rd 2019

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Table of Contents

Introduction.................................................................................................................................................3
Opinions......................................................................................................................................................4
Asharib Aftab’s Stance............................................................................................................................5
Maria’s Stance.........................................................................................................................................7
Final Decision..........................................................................................................................................7
Sources........................................................................................................................................................7
Research Papers.......................................................................................................................................7
Newspapers...........................................................................................................................................10
Living Organizations.............................................................................................................................11
Internet..................................................................................................................................................13
Logical Reasoning.................................................................................................................................14
Conclusion.................................................................................................................................................14
References.................................................................................................................................................15

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Introduction
Millennial is the name of the generation that typically ranges from early 1980s to early 2000s.
Millennials are the children of baby boomers. Millennials now a days consists of youth or
teenagers. Millennials today are studying in colleges or universities or starting or building their
careers in life. Millennials show some characteristics that are not found in the previous
generations mainly because of the introduction of the new digital era, social media or
globalization and many other reasons.

The word narcissism is derived from”narcissus”. Narcissus is a Greek mythology of a man

named Narcissus. This man was a famous hunter of Boeotia and was well known for his
handsome looks. Once he went to a pool and saw his own reflection in the water. He became so
obsessed with the reflection that he fell in love with the image. It is popular that after that
moment he lost his desire to live and died whilst staring at his own image. Thus, the term
narcissism came into being. Narcissism refers to excessive admiration or interest in oneself .
Narcissist is a term used to refer to people who are self-absorbed and self-centered. They think
that the whole world revolves around them.

The term millennials are more narcissistic than their parents means that the new generation are
more self-absorbed and value themselves as compared to the previous generations. Every
generation is narcissist to some extent but after long research by the researchers it was found that
the millennials are high in narcissism as compared to previous generations. Mainly due to the
introduction of social media and internet the element of narcissism has increased over the past
few years .The trend of uploading selfies has risen over the decade. People waiting to get
response from other people on their pictures show that how much narcissism exist in
Millennials. Compared to the Baby Boomers who valued hard work and struggle in life. They
would rather spend their time watching videos for entertainment or using social media to connect
with the world.

There is a strong debate whether Millennials are more narcissist or not. Some people favor this
point while others are against it. To study the topic deeply we carried out a study in which we
reviewed different types of sources such as internet, magazines, newspapers, living organizations
etc. Finally, we agreed to a common point.

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Opinions

Asharib In Favor

Babar Against

Maria Against

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Asharib Aftab’s Stance

Narcissism is basically self-centeredness, self-praise and self-obessision , Millenials are

considered as more narcissistic than the older generations becuase of social media, the evolution
in beauty and healthcare inudstry and also the economic era they live in, however the older
generation (gen X) had no such access to technologies making them less narcissitic. The constant
state of comparing ourself to others that social media keeps us in, the hundred years of evolution
in the art of beautifying oneself and the current economic condition of the entire world makes the
millenials more narcissistic than the older generations.

The current economic situation of the world makes people more focused, more goal oriented and
more Entreprenurial. In this era where living standards are getting higher day by day, it gets
difficult for a person to even survive if he/she can not focus on their work rather than focusing on
other people’s lives. The high standards of living and constant innovation in the work-
enviroment makes it hard to focus on anything else. Morever people are getting more goal
oriented and the most Entrepreneurial ventures and most Entreperenuers in the history are the
product of this generation. Whereas the older generation had a comparatively easier lifestyle and
the standards of living back then were quite low. Moreover older generations were less focused
as their priorities contained family values, relatives and accqitances rather than career and
finances.

Social media which is a place to interact and communicate has affected the millenials is such a
way it has made them obssesd with the numbers of followers/following and the non-private
lifestyle. Users on social media platfroms are obssesed with the number of people following
them as compared to how many followers their friends have. This constant comparison makes
people think highly of themselves and as if they are somehow better than others. Moreover on
social media people are habitual of sharing whatever is happening in their life, irrespective of
what should be kept private or public. It makes people happy to show others how luxurios their
lifestyle is and how superior they are as compared to others. Whereas the older generation had a
rather simple lifestyle and they were habitual of keeping their private life private, they used not
to make everything public, and their acts were not to make other people jealous/insecure.

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The evolution of the beauty industry, the influence of the endoresers and the standard of beauty
set by the society makes few people narcissistic. The industry of beauty and personal care have
evolved so much that they can literally make the person transform into his/her perfect shape. The
standards of the “personal/best shape” which are set by the influencers , make the followers
forcefully beleive that without these products they will not look good. This thinking leads people
to get products and beleive that they are better-looking and more attractive than others. Whereas
the older generations had different set of standards when it comes to beauty. People were less
fond of using products and they were in the most common words “ comfortable with their skin”.

Maria’s Stance

My stance is that young people are more narcissist than older people whether they belong to any
generation. Young people are self focused, they have self importance. They think that they are
special and can do anything. Thus, narcissism is found in every generation. I think it is not
restricted to any specific generation. Every generation thinks they are special and are better than
the ones before them. But Asharib was able to convince me that millennials are more narcissist
as compared to other generations and he gave me three reasons why: the economic situation,
social media and the growing competition and finally the beauty and personal care have made
people narcissist.

Final Decision

After reviewing all the statements and understanding both the sides of this topic, we agreed to a
common stance that Millennials are more narcissist than their parents.

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Sources
Research Papers

This Research paper “Narcissistic Personality and Selfies Taking Behavior among College
Students” tells us that how millennial are more narcissistic than their parents through the concept
of selfies and social media in millennial. It was conducted by 3 Indian authors lead by Dr S K
Maheshwari. This was published in April 2018. In this research, authors linked narcissism of
millennial with selfies taking behavior and use of social media among young students. This
research paper help us in understanding that how narcissism is more in millennial than their
parents. Research tells us that narcissistic attributes are increasing in millennial due to excessive
usage of social media. As we know that selfies and social media are the attraction for this
generation than for previous generation. So, here are some research studies which tell us that
posting selfies on social media are the millennial traits for self-admiration and showing an
unrealistic positive image of themselves which didn’t exist in previous generation. As one of the
Wickel’s studies found that around 55% of the people took part in his research survey consider
posting selfies on internet increase the behavior of narcissism in millennial. One more study
conducted by Bergman revealed that the people posting more selfies on social media websites
are the same people having more score on narcissistic trait scale which tell us that as millennial
are more active on social media so they are among those people who have more high score on
narcissistic trait test. On the other hand, this Dr S K Maheshwari’s research paper conducted
Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI 16) from college students and then categorize these
scores in five classes.

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 1)

Distribution of subjects as per narcissism score

60.00%
49%
50.00%
39%
40.00%
30.00%
20.00% Distribution of subjects as per
8% narcissism score
10.00% 4%
0.00%
ic ild te er
e re
sist M era v ve
rc
is od Se y
se
-n
a M er
V
on
N

2) Frequency (%) distribution of college students as per Narcissism score

So, classes are Non-narcissistic, mild narcissistic, moderate, severe and very severe
Narcissistic features. This figure shows that 96.40% students have narcissistic features
which include 8.40% of severe narcissistic features, 39% of moderate narcissistic features
and 49% of mild narcissistic features. Moreover, just 3.6% of students have non-
narcissistic features which are an alarming situation. Furthermore, it is clear from this
research paper that majority of the students have narcissistic traits which tell us that this
me generation is more narcissistic than their parents.

Professional Magazine

The incidence of narcissistic personality disorder is nearly three times as high for people in their
20s as for the generation that's now 65 or older, according to the National Institutes of Health;
58% more college students scored higher on a narcissism scale in 2009 than in 1982. Millennials
got so many participation trophies growing up that a recent study showed that 40% believe they
should be promoted every two years, regardless of performance. They are fame-obsessed: three

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times as many middle school girls want to grow up to be a personal assistant to a famous person
as want to be a Senator, according to a 2007 survey; four times as many would pick the assistant
job over CEO of a major corporation. They're so convinced of their own greatness that the
National Study of Youth and Religion found the guiding morality of 60% of millennials in any
situation is that they'll just be able to feel what's right. Their development is stunted: more people
ages 18 to 29 live with their parents than with a spouse, according to the 2012 Clark University
Poll of Emerging Adults.

According to the book by Jean Twenge and Kelth Campbell (cited in 2013) , the millennials are
more narcissistic now a days than the previous generations. Millenials were encouraged to work
with the teams, groups not as individual. Whereas the Boomers grow up in a very thriving time
when un employement means jobs are not difficult to find , and other expenses like prices of
houses would be low. But today’s the things are totally opposite , in which millenials can do
their best they can.

Newspapers

The numbers from social media alone tells a great story of self obsession. More than 80 million
pictures are regularly uploaded on social media platforms such as Instagram, also its been
observed that 3.5 billion social media activities takes place by 1.4 billion people everyday which
comprises of 20% of world’s population. People upload their life events on facebook like it’s a
day job, and surprisingly most of this social media havoc are caused by millennial generation.

Jack Price a social media influencer with more than 60000 followers on twitter and instagram
across the globe quotes:

“I sometimes spend hours thinking about what to post, thinking about what my followers want,
but also what I want them to think about me. But I see it as time well invested: it’s made me
successful, well known, and it’s made me money”.

A paper by Gibson, Greenwood and Murphy Jr. (2009), has described about different values and
what they meant to different generations. They have set an interview among three generations

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i.e. boomers, generation X and generation Y which is said to be as Millennial, to give the
importance of words related with the two values that are Instrumental values and Terminal
values.

After conducting the interview, the results showed that the Millennial are more towards the
Instrumental values which consists of Ambitious and Independent, more than the other
generations.

According to Chao et al. 1994, As Millennial starting working in any new workplace, like
generations before them, the first difficulty they encounter is their socialization with other people
into the organization.

Millennial are born between 1979 and 1994) can be called as “Me generation”. This means that
they are over confident and self-absorbed. They also are described as lacking in the work and
faithfulness (Marston 2009). As depicted that Millennial are self centered, unmotivated,
disrespectful, disloyal.

Moving toward other side many people believe that Millennial are immature, lazy and selfish.
They literally take selfies all the time and upload on the social media and more importantly
people believe that the more narcissistic you are, the all the more unreasonably you see yourself
as capable, vital, and appealing. In spite of the fact that they complete have a tendency to have
high confidence and prosperity by specific definitions, narcissists are additionally inclined to
impulsivity, dangerous choices, and temperamental sentimental connections. At the point when
their personality is threatened, narcissists frequently react with angriness.

Living Organizations

In order to study the behavior of millennials in the workplace, we choose an organization.The

name of the organization is Progressive Marketing Network which is a software house. It
develops and designs web on internet. The employees in the organization were frank enough;
they did not hesitate showing their narcissistic behavior.

Narcissism in a workplace is a great problem as it has a significant effect on the entire

organization. People who exhibit narcissistic behavior usually engage themselves in

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counterproductive behavior. Narcissistic people create difficulties for their colleagues and their
seniors as it is difficult to work with them since they believe that they are better than others and
others should handle problems according to their thinking. Penney and Spector conducted a
study in which they found a direct relation between narcissism and anger. They believe that
narcissistic behavior can lead to counterproductive behavior such as spreading rumors,
interpersonal aggression, disrupting others work and disturbing and wasting others’ time and
resources.

What we observed in Progressive Marketing Network was that their employees were continually
using social media and uploading their selfies. They spent time on setting their hair every time
they went to the restroom. Furthermore, during their work, they continually checked their social
media to see how many people had reacted to their posts and what comments they had gotten.
This in turn caused a great deal of loss to the firm as it proved to be a counterproductive behavior
and the sensitivity of time was often ignored. Due to this, deadlines were often difficult to meet
and created problems on the last moment. Sometimes, a work worth 2 days was completed in 3-4
days due to the laziness. Although management is to be blamed for such behavior, narcissism
still plays a major role in disrupting the ideal workplace environment. Sometimes a strict
management helps in controlling narcissistic behavior but usually it becomes difficult to control
narcissistic people as they indulge in other activities such as spreading rumors or disrupting
others work if they are strictly acted upon. Even though the employees did not harm anyone
directly, some people who exhibited narcissistic behavior created problems.

If a manager is narcissistic, then it becomes more of a problem. Since all the major decisions are
to be made by the manager, it is important that he acts in the company’s interests. A narcissistic
manager tends to show off and wants to get attention by showing status symbols. It can often be
seen that a narcissistic manager makes decisions and strategies according to his own potential for
gaining personal attention. Such decisions are effective on short term basis and may cause a
greater loss in the long run. Hence, it is important that the manager must be free of narcissistic
behavior. According to a study done by Robert Williams in 2007, managers who are in their 20’s
usually tend to make decisions that benefit in short term to get themselves attention and praise
from their colleagues and seniors. Elder managers tend to see in the long run even if they have to

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face criticism on the short term. This clearly explains that millennials often show narcissistic
behavior no matter what occupation they have or what responsibilities they hold.

Moreover, narcissists believe that they deserve high ranks and that they are often undervalued.
Hence they keep demanding higher wages and promotions. They do not work at places where
they are undervalued and lack public attention. In fact, according to a survey, narcissists would
accept to work as a personal secretary of a famous celebrity to gain popularity rather than
working as a technician who earns higher than a personal assistant.

Internet

Keeping in mind that our stance is in favor that narcissism is most found in Millenials rather than
their parents (Gen X). To support the stance following data has been collected from the internet:

As the first point is the Economic conditions, According to Hoffower, 2018 (Business insider),
“Because they came of age during the Great Recession, millennials are dealing with a number of
financial problems.” When we see Maslow’s hierachy of needs, physiological needs comes at the
first, these phsyiological needs are the basis for motivation, so in millenilas as this need is found
in vast quantity, it makes them more self centered to their goals than ever.

According to get2growth 100 million startups are opening each year. At this era of creativity and
innovation, where everyday a new product has been created, it gets hard for anyone to compete.
During this time someone who is Narcissistic and focuses more on himself/herself can be handy,
because of his/her vision of seeing the world. Narcissism means thinking about you as different
from the others and that’s what companies need at this time. Where companies launch 2-3
products per year, as compared to single product in a decade. All of these companies need out-
of-the-box distant ideas that make their product stand out.

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Logical Reasoning

The stats of pewinternet shows how more than 80% of millennial use social media. This rapid
growth in the number of social media users is however a good for business but it is also alarming
for the youth as social media is brining a lot of issues with it self. This is what social media is
making all the millenials do, it puts us unintentionally in a race, a race about who gets more likes
and who has more followers, or whether someone has more Snapchat score (Becuase it matters
now). The dissatisfaction that every millenial feels as a part of the social media eco system is
caused because of the number game. The psychology of human being is to win, no one likes to
lose and that’s what social media wants us to beleive, that there’s actually a race and there is
winning and losing in it. Winners gets to feel superior and the rest are inferior. This feeling of
superiority is making people narcissistic and these users start to think highly of themselves
leading to a lot of psychological problems.

Conclusion
Narcissism is a trait found in almost every generation but people termed as narcissist are the
ones who scored higher on the narcissism test. From references mentioned, it is seen that the
generation of millennials are found to score higher on the narcissism test. This help us deriving
an idea that the generation of millennials have greater level of self-admiration, entitlement and
narcissism than generations preceding them, majority of our group members were in favor of the
stance that millennials are a generation with more tendency towards narcissism. The question
often asked is, why millennials are termed as more narcissistic than other generations. Many
writers have written on this topic with arguments that support this stance or nullify it. However,
majority of those writers agree with the stance as it has been backed up by many researches.

Since it is the age of millennials, they are rapidly taking over the workplace. This has had
significant effect on workplace environment as narcissists tend to get involved in
counterproductive behavior. A company faces greater losses if a narcissist reaches a senior
management post as he makes decision that get him instant attention and shows company’s
benefit in the short run. However, this may sometime cause greater loss in the long run.
Moreover, they believe that they deserve more and hence keep demanding higher wages. They
do not work where they are undervalued and where they lack public attention.

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References

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326032982_Narcissistic_Personality_and_Selfie_Takin
g_Behavior_among_College_Students/references

[ CITATION Mah18 \l 1033 ]

[ CITATION htt \l 1033 ]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/17/i-narcissist-vanity-social-media-and-the-
human-condition

http://time.com/247/millennials-the-me-me-me-generation/

ttps://www.pewinternet.org/2018/03/01/social-media-use-in-2018/
https://www.theodysseyonline.com/social-media-narcissistic
https://www.tradegecko.com/blog/shifting-demographics-millennials-beauty-cosmetics-industry

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326032982_Narcissistic_Personality_and_Selfie_Takin
g_Behavior_among_College_Students/references
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/17/i-narcissist-vanity-social-media-and-the-
human-condition
http://time.com/247/millennials-the-me-me-me-generation/

https://www.tradegecko.com/blog/shifting-demographics-millennials-beauty-cosmetics-industry
https://www.pewinternet.org/2018/03/01/social-media-use-in-2018/
https://www.businessinsider.com/biggest-financial-problems-for-millennials-2018-
8#millennials-need-to-save-more-money-for-retirement-7

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