A Snapshot of a Generation May Come Out Blurry By BENEDICT CAREY

Published: August 2, 2010

Never let it be said that psychological researchers duck a challenge. In recent years some have sketched
a portrait of the current crop of twenty- and thirty-somethings that is low on greatness and high on
traits like entitlement and narcissism. The Millennials, also known as Generation Y, may be a little
callous, too: At a psychology conference in May, researchers presented data suggesting that college
students today had significantly less “empathetic concern” than students of the 1980s.

Social scientists have been surveying young people for decades, looking for trends in thinking and
behavior that might be attributable to shifts in the broader culture. Tracking behaviors and attitudes is
relatively straightforward. Compared with previous generations, for instance, the Millennials are more
tolerant of people of other races and different sexual orientations, research suggests. They appear to be
more likely than previous generations to do volunteer work. Hundreds of thousands of them have
signed on to serve in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But assessing their motives, their traits — their collective personality — is a far more slippery territory.
Thus the debate over the Generation Y character, and whether generations even have distinct
characters.

It revolves around a recent finding that, on personality questionnaires, people born after 1970 are more
likely than previous generations to see themselves as “an important person,” to say they’re confident
and rate their self-esteem higher. “The research converges on this: that individualism is increasing, that
it’s more acceptable in the culture to focus on oneself, and not to worry so much about social rules,”
said Jean M. Twenge, a psychologist at San Diego State University, who in a 2006 book, “Generation
Me,” described the trend and its possible upside (more opportunities for those who have lacked
confidence) and downside (increased levels of anxiety, depression).

But a recent issue of the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science aired a backlash against this
argument, in which psychologists bickered over methodology and offered alternative interpretations of
survey data.

In one report, two psychologists analyzed a large survey of high school seniors that spanned decades
and concluded that there was “little evidence of meaningful change” in questions related to self-esteem,
individualism, or life satisfaction. “I think as a profession we need to be careful that we don’t stereotype
or label a vast number of people unless the evidence is very strong,” said M. Brent Donnellan, of
Michigan State University, who co-authored the paperwith Kali H. Trzesniewski, of the University of
Western Ontario.

In another critique, researchers at the University of Illinois reported data suggesting that narcissism
peaks in young adulthood, “not because of cultural changes but because of age-related developmental
trends.”

Dr. Twenge and others have shot back, point by point, and the standoff is not likely to be resolved soon.
For one thing, personality tests are themselves suspect. “We should keep in mind that personality tests
are themselves cultural documents, idiosyncratic products of particular individuals that say more about
their creators than about the people who take them,” said Annie Murphy Paul, author of “The Cult of
Personality Testing” (Free Press, 2004).

For another, researchers tend to work with samples, like college students, that are not representative of
the generation at large. Nor is it even clear that outside events can alter a person’s fundamental traits
by much. “We find very little change on scores cross-culturally, or even after big historical changes” like
war or revolution, said Antonio Terracciano, a psychologist at the National Institute on Aging.

In short: Generation Y’s collective personality, if such a thing exists, is not likely to be much different
from other generations’. Still, small differences may matter, and there is some agreement in findings
from psychologists on both sides of this debate. In his own research, Dr. Terracciano has found a slight
decrease in trust over the generations and a slight increase in a something called “ascendancy,” or
“competence” — a self-professed confidence in getting things done.

This trait is similar to one measured by a widely used questionnaire called the Narcissistic Personality
Inventory, which asks people whether they agree with statements like “I will be a success” and “I always
know what I’m doing.” This test is not a diagnostic tool for narcissistic personality disorder, a serious
psychiatric condition; it is simply a rough gauge of self-confidence, vanity, and self-importance, traits
everyone has to some degree. And scores have gone up significantly, at least in some college samples.

“This is particularly true in women,” Dr. Twenge. “That is where we see the most dramatic increases.”
But no trait is good or bad in an absolute sense. Each jostles with other personality traits, expressing
itself differently depending on context. A sense of self-importance might make one person come across
as pompous and annoying. But it could make another purposeful enough to volunteer for the military,
become a leader of a social cause or take a stab at college against all advice from friends and parents.