What do all these definitions mean, you ask? While vanity is a negative trait of having too much love for oneself and thinking lowly of others, narcissism is an extremity to the point where it can harm oneself, others, and prevent a person from living a regular life. Narcissistic personality disorder is a mental disorder that inhibits a person from maintaining relationships, having a social life, or even keeping a job. Unfortunately, people throw around both these words as if they both mean the exact same thing, ( I admit that I am one of them) because of our lack of understanding on these topics. The understanding of vanity and narcissism is something that should be further studied and discussed in high school, because it can help students as they have to take on college, and the real world.
Many articles that I have come across show me that many people, including journalists and researchers, don't seem to use the word narcissism appropriately. Children of this generation do indeed take an excessive number of selfies, but does that necessarily mean they should be diagnosed with a mental disorder?
Challenges that I have encountered in my research include finding information that is different, our that stands out from the rest. Many articles and resources hit the same few points of the effects of parents, appraisal, and technology, but it is difficult for me to find new raw information about the topic of vanity and narcissism unless I dig deeper. Basically, most articles are replicas and are even restating the obvious. I feel that this issue arises from the fact that vanity and narcissism are still new topics of research that are being further looked into by researchers even today. As time passes, I am positive that more information will arise as well.
This however, is not too difficult considering the fact that as time passes with my research on this topic, my interest increases.
I had the same issues using the words narcissism and vanity interchangeably because they are both so similar. However, I could see how this is a mistake after reading your brilliant explanation. I think this is something that many people struggle with and finding exact definitions is ideal. That being said, sometimes there are so many different perspectives and descriptions of narcissism or vanity that it is hard to decipher the difference. One of my sources that stands out from the rest is an article called "Bosses who love themselves" by Phyllis Korkki. Most of my sources are about the idea and theory of narcissism but this one gives detailed real life example.
ReplyDeleteI actually focused solely on the word "narcissism" but I can totally see how using "vanity" and "narcissism" interchangeably can cause confusion and such. What I do identify with entirely on is the difficulty with finding novel information, or sources that stand out from the rest of the crowd. Amongst all the sources for my topic (narcissistic leaders' effects on companies and group performance), one source stood out dramatically: "Narcissistic Leaders: The Incredible Pros, the Inevitable Cons." by Michael Maccoby. It stood out because 1) it directly addressed the topics that I intended on addressing and 2) although some of the points it goes over can be seen in other sources, this source provided numerous novel examples that I had not considered before. Upon these examples I was able to build a solid argument in favor of productive narcissistic leadership.
ReplyDeleteWhen I start my research, I couldn't identify the difference between narcissism and vanity as well, I had a really hard time using those words in the essay. I find many articles that focus on narcissism, and then I find articles solely on vanity, and with the information, I change my way of using the two words. One of the source I use is called "Seeing Narcissism Everywhere." This source is helpful by helping me learn the difference between narcissism and vanity, and it also provide a lot of information. During my research, I also have a difficult time finding articles that can use in my paper, I have to use several different data base and search different combination of word to find the right article.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I didn't have the problem of identifying differences narcissism versus vanity due to focusing soley on narcissism, I understand how it can be confusing as I didn't know that they could not be used interchangeably until now. I agree, it did seem that many of the narcissism articles I found reworded the same information over and over. They all took the same stance: narcissism is bad for society. Although, they did take different positions on how bad it was for society, which wasn't too helpful. Probably the most interesting and unique article I found was one entitled, "Have We Raised a Generation of Narcissists?" by Steve Chapman. This article was refreshing because it discussed a different perspective of narcissism, that the "technology" generation isn't the first generation to be identified as narcissistic; that the 60s and 70s were considered narcissistic in their time for their rock and roll, drugs, etc. It also discussed the postives to narcissism, like a decrease in the use of illicit drugs and teen pregnancies, creating a very nice counter-argument.
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