What do we call people who think they can make narcissists care? Naive narcissists?

I wrote the title of this blog post with some degree of jest, of course, but it is puzzling to think that such claims are being made without the right kind of data. 

The Atlantic Monthly reported on a new study titled, 'How to make the narcissist in your life a little nicer.'  

Hepper thinks that eventually, this research could help shape therapeutic interventions aimed at narcissists. Teachers or human resources representatives could use such tools to try to get their resident egomaniacs to be more charitable.

Perhaps one day we can banish all the world’s narcissists to a desert island littered with tanning beds and TV cameras. Until that day, this type of compassion training might be the best weapon we have against the self-absorbed. As Hepper said, maybe it can help make the world “a nicer, more prosocial place.”

The reporter is pushing a study that is based on 'volunteers' -- i.e., a self-select population, which for whatever reason believes it has narcissistic tendencies and is willing to be introspective, to be taught, and to undergo interventions. The outcomes evaluated sound different from the original objectives and original outcome definitions. The numbers reported also don't mean anything to me because I do not know how to compare them to positive and negative controls. (I bet each one of us has some degree of narcissism; otherwise it would be impossible to look out for ourselves and our progeny. How we keep our degree of narcissism under check and in balance is probably reflective of our ability to be introspective and self-critical.) 

True narcissists will not believe or declare themselves to be narcissists. They are smooth-operating sociopaths. My experience has been that the only way to make them all 'nicer' is just to run away from them.  Far, far away from them.

I don't know whether media people are naive or subject matter experts/academics oversell themselves and inflate the significance of their studies with a finality most studies don't deserve.  But as I learned from my pit bull study experience, if a scientist tries to elaborate with care and with equal degree of attention to the strengths as well as the limitations of their study, the study will be used to support both sides of the argument even if there was considerable emphasis on what the findings mean given the context of the study environment.        

In the context of narcissism, has anyone ever considered this: Is it really possible to make narcissists nicer?  And if we believe we can do exactly that, is it at all possible that we too may be full of delusions about our own abilities to change this world?

The Imposter Syndrome

Dr. Richard Sigurdson, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Professor of Political Studies at the University of Manitoba, has an enlightening introduction to the phenomenon known as the Imposter Syndrome.

... the term "Impostor Phenomenon" (IP) was coined by psychologist Pauline Rose Clance. Working with psychotherapist Suzanne Imes in 1978, she discovered a condition of self-doubt and failure to internalize success in a sample of more than 150 high-achieving women. [Link]

Now I know. After 16 years of post-secondary education and 3 further years of post-doctoral training, I learn that there is possibly a term to describe what I experienced all those years. Ironically, I learn about it at a time when I finally feel self-assured and confident enough to look forward to a potentially meaningful and successful academic career ahead of me. All it took for me to experience this transformation was to work on my own for the past 2 years--identify a new research area, write my own papers for peer review from start to finish, and call my successes (and my failures) my own--without the comfort of support and timely criticism that are usually taken for granted within established research groups. It also helps that I am no longer living on a post-doctoral salary. Much as I hate to put it in writing in a public place, the fact remains that being paid comparatively better also makes me want to prove to myself and to my seniors that I am worth the price.

How else can I explain the change in my attitudes and beliefs toward myself and my professional scope? Except for age (and marriage and motherhood), all other background variables I came with when I stepped into a postgraduate program in North America remain the same after all these years. I am left to conclude that age (or rather, accompanying maturity and personal life experiences), relative independence at work, and some tangible rewards have finally made me lose my fear of failure and gain a realistic perspective of my role in an ever-expanding world of research possibilities limited only by the imagination. (The finiteness of research funding and publishing space in journals are blissfully and temporarily forgotten on purpose).