Are narcissistic people lonelier?

Are people who are more narcissistic, lonelier?

Are you a narcissistic person? Do you often feel lonely? In fact, are people who are more narcissistic, lonelier? What?

Recently, a cover article in "The Atlantic Monthly" "Is Facebook Making Us Lonelier" caused great controversy in the United States. Novelist Stephen Marche tells an old lady's story at the beginning of his article.

Yvette Vickers, the former Playboy model and Hollywood B-movie star, died alone at her home in California. A year later, the old lady’s dried body was discovered by a neighbor. According to the forensic examination, she died of heart disease. She had no children, no religious group, no immediate social circle. Before her death, she did not call any family or friends, but communicated with "fans" found through the Internet. Within two weeks of news of her death, she became a trending figure on Facebook, with 16,057 Facebook posts and 881 Tweets discussing her death.

Stephen March said that the old lady often acted in horror movies when she was young. Now her death has become a symbol of a new age fear: the fear of loneliness.

On March 18, a girl named "Zuifan" posted a Weibo post on Sina: "I have depression, so I just want to die. There is no important reason, so don't worry about it." My departure. Goodbye. "

A few days later, we found out that this girl was named Ma Jie, a "post-90s" student from a university in Nanjing, who committed suicide on March 18, 2012. Looking through her past blogs, you will find that she has been asking for help on Weibo, but we have not "heard" her.

I want to hold your hand tightly, not my mouse.

I am as lonely as a broken toilet.

Am I missing? Why are you not around?

There is only one me in the world. I am an endangered animal. When I die, I will be gone, but I am still worthless.

For her, it is difficult to tell whether loneliness leads to depression or depression leads to loneliness. But loneliness and depression obviously formed a terrible vicious cycle in her: the more depressed she became, the more lonely she became, and the more lonely she became, the more depressed she became.

What role did the Internet play in this girl’s suicide?

Of course we cannot blame the Internet for her death, but at least let us be vigilant. In terms of emotional comfort, our expectations for the Internet may be too high - in her Weibo, it is not that there is no one to comfort her and encourage her, but the emotional support that one sentence can give is not enough for a girl with severe depression. That's too frivolous. If she had sought real emotional support in the real world, would there have been any different endings?

What is loneliness?

Russell described "loneliness" as a person trembling. His eyes glanced past the edge of the world, straight into the cold and unfathomable lifeless abyss.

Loneliness is a basic characteristic of modern people. Almost everyone will experience the pain of loneliness at some point in their lives. It can be as simple and superficial as being the least likely player on your team to play or the girl who always sits in the corner at parties; or it can be as sharp and dramatic as losing a spouse or a close friend.

In the book "Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection," evolutionary psychologist John T. Cacioppo likens loneliness to "hunger," both of which are emitted by the body. A kind of early warning signal, reminding you of the existence of some kind of scarcity.

We need to take in reasonable blood sugar as an energy source for metabolism and engage in various activities of the living body. When blood sugar is not enough, we will feel hungry. This is a signal to remind you that it is time to eat something and replenish energy. If you ignore this signal, we will run out of energy and not even have the energy to find food, which is fatal.

The scarcity warned by loneliness and the pain and restlessness it causes is not calories, but connection. It reminds us of the danger of staying away from the group and losing contact - during the long evolution, human ancestors relied on social cooperation rather than individual ability to survive in cruel competition. Most neuroscientists agree that the human cerebral cortex evolved not to develop music, mathematics, or any kind of individual talent, but to process complex social information to ensure the survival of the group--without group cooperation. , we cannot defeat dangerous beasts, nor can we reproduce our own offspring. So when you feel lonely, it's evolution's ancient mechanism warning you to rejoin the crowd or pay the price - high blood pressure, heart disease, obesity, lack of exercise, smoking, alcoholism, and even Alzheimer's disease. It’s all about loneliness. One of the long-term negative effects of loneliness is that it impairs the brain's self-control.

Different people have different ways of responding to this signal of lack.

Some people are naturally more tolerant of loneliness. They like to be alone and feel uncomfortable in crowds. Some people are natural communicators and can only feel safe in a crowd. This has a lot to do with genes. In 2005, a twin study jointly conducted by the United States and the Netherlands showed that, like neuroticism and anxiety, loneliness is not only the result of a lack of social interaction, but also an innate component rooted in genes.

The most famous solitary people in the West are Thoreau, Wordsworth, Melville, etc. Thoreau was educated at Harvard, but he went to live in seclusion by Walden Pond, the most desolate place at the time. He built his own house, fished, hunted, and grew vegetables, living like a primitive man; Wordsworth and his sister lived in seclusion in the Cumberland Lake area and The Grasmere Lake District is isolated from the world; Melville has been wandering at sea for many years and has been unhappy in his life. But for these people, loneliness may not be an unbearable pain, but a state that is deliberately sought. Compared with similar people, mountains, rivers, vegetation, and trees are more congenial to their temperaments. Nature is the source of joy and wisdom in life.

However, as naturally social animals, most of us long for intimate relationships between people - to be close to someone, to be understood, to be cared for, and to be loved.

The promise of social networks

The original meaning of the Internet is to eliminate loneliness. From its inception, the Internet has promised us a borderless utopia. When we first learned about the "six-dimensional space" theory, we felt that the whole world was open to you - as long as through 6 people, any two people on the earth can be connected. It was a great feeling of happiness - isolated individuals could communicate with each other, artistic young people could find soul mates, gay young people no longer felt like monsters, and everyone was not an outsider.

In the era of Facebook and Weibo, the purpose of social networks is to connect everyone - a huge social group formed around you, which means more social capital and huge potential. value. But amid such ubiquitous connections, our loneliness doesn’t seem to have diminished, and may well have intensified. Why?

Loneliness is a deep feeling that has nothing to do with the number or frequency of connections, but rather the quality and meaning of the connections. You can be surrounded by crowds of people and still feel profoundly lonely. Marriage will alleviate a person's loneliness, but only if your marriage is happy, otherwise marriage will only make you more lonely. Faith also alleviates one's loneliness, provided your God is an abstract, warm being.

Technology tends to simplify all the complex things in life. Human relationships are rich, complex, and require skill, energy, and patience to manage. But in the Internet age, what we lack most is patience, and what we are most stingy with is attention. Therefore, while social networks expand social groups, they inevitably lead to the flattening and superficiality of interpersonal relationships. Couples who have broken up can simply click "Delete" on the homepage to make each other disappear without a trace in their own world. Can you be honest with the "fans" you brought here?

Human nature is to cherish those hard-earned things - a thousand pieces of gold are easy to find, but a confidant is rare.

A survey in the United States found that the number of "confidants" a person had dropped from 2.94 in 1985 to 2.08 in 2004. Similarly, in 1985, only 10% said they had no one with whom they could discuss life's important issues, and 15% said they had only one such friend. By 2004, these two proportions had risen to 25% and 20% respectively.

In "Alone Together", female professor Shelly Tuerk of the MIT Media Laboratory believes that social networks have eroded friendship mainly by simplifying "conversation" For connection--In network connections, we always look forward to faster and simpler responses. To get the fastest answers, we only ask the simplest questions. Conversation unfolds slowly. It requires patience and skills, taking time to understand the subtle changes in the other person's expressions and movements, and looking at the problem from the other person's perspective. Most importantly, we really need to face each other and listen to each other, including the boring details. Because it’s when we stutter, hesitate, or fail to express ourselves that we reveal our true selves to each other. And when we recall a friend, the most touching thing is often not his words, but his eyes and small body movements.

When Swiss psychologist Piaget studied children's mental development, he found that before the age of 8, children are unable to see the world from another person's perspective. We will eventually grow up, get out of that stage, and learn to understand and figure out each other's thoughts. But in the age of social networks, our minds seem to be moving closer to children again. All social networks are designed to be "egocentric". Your broadcast, your photo album, your "fans", your aesthetic taste (favorite music, movies, TV series), the groups you join? Everything is about you.

The mentality of a person waiting for a response on a social networking site is like a child wanting attention from adults. Children always overestimate other people's interest in them, so they invent imaginary audiences. People constantly update their status on Facebook and Weibo, as if the whole world is listening.

In the tradition of psychoanalysis, narcissism does not mean how much a person loves himself/herself, but that he/she is so fragile that he/she must constantly receive support and approval from others in order to affirm the existence of the self. Technology may not have caused it, but it must have encouraged this mental habit to a certain extent - a feeling must be confirmed by others before it can be established, or even become a part of the feeling itself.

Our various behaviors on social networks are nothing more than to make ourselves "seen". In the eyes of others, confirm your existence and gain understanding, attention and love. The feeling of being loved can increase a person's passion more than anything else, even if it is probably just an illusion or wishful thinking. In order to be affirmed and validated, we put our best selves forward everywhere. Existence has become a performance - showing off happiness, showing off love, showing off luxury cars and mansions? All kinds of performances. Once there is no response, you will fall into huge loss or anxiety.

Walking around in every corner of the world, you will see the same scene: people are connected through keyboards and small touch screens, but everyone is in their own bubble. We don’t want to be really close to someone; the gaze of others is just a tool to prop up our fragile sense of self.

Psychologists have always suspected that social networks make people more narcissistic. Not long ago, a study from Western Illinois University confirmed for the first time a direct link between the two. Researchers tracked the Facebook usage habits of 294 students, ages 18 to 65, and measured two "socially disruptive" dimensions of narcissistic personality - grandiose exhibitionism (GE) and grandiosity/exploitation. Desire (EE). GE includes narcissism, vanity, superiority, and exhibitionistic tendencies. This kind of person often says things that are not shocking but cannot stand being ignored and does not miss any opportunity for self-promotion. EE includes "a sense of respectability and a willingness to manipulate and exploit others."

Experimental results show that the higher the GE score, the greater the number of friends on Facebook, some of which exceed 800. People who score higher on both GE and EE are more likely to accept friend requests from strangers on Facebook, and are more likely to ask for help rather than provide help.

Researchers believe that in addition to mobile phones and social networks, the narcissistic tendencies of American young people are likely to be related to the self-esteem education promoted in the United States in the 1980s and 1990s. Whether this is true in other countries has not been confirmed by research. But Britons are already complaining that more and more young British people are catching narcissism from the United States.

In the article "Is Facebook Making Us Lonelier?" the author also mentioned a long-term follow-up study in Sweden that showed a strong positive correlation between narcissism in youth and loneliness in old age. Maybe this will sound a warning to many people.

The end of solitude?

Not long ago, Sherrie Turk mentioned in her TED speech that once, she walked into a nursing home and saw a woman who had lost her child. woman is talking to a small seal-shaped robot. The robot looked like it was looking into her eyes and could understand what she was saying, and many people praised the technology as great. It was a robot developed in her own laboratory, and its original intention was to accompany and comfort the loneliness of the elderly. But she felt that was the most complicated, tangled, and unpleasant moment in her 15 years of work - a person was actually trying to make a machine that had no sense of human life trajectories understand her! The robot just completed a Great show. It doesn't have to face death, and it doesn't understand life at all.

This is not the first time that we have seen the horrifying desolation behind the prosperity of technology. As Sherry Turk said: "The most attractive thing about technology is our most vulnerable aspect. We are all vulnerable - we are lonely, but we are afraid of close relationships. So we invented social networking sites Technologies like social robots allow us to experience the illusion of care and companionship without the need for true friendship. "

When Descartes said, "I think, therefore I am." Solitude and meditation are explorations of the self to achieve self-wholeness. We are now so accustomed to being connected that being alone becomes an impossibility. Even for just a few seconds, people become anxious, panicked, restless, and ready to take out their phones and share their thoughts and emotions. It used to be, "I have an idea, so I want to call someone and tell someone"; now it's, "I want to have an idea, so I need to text someone and tell someone."

The value of the Internet age is "I share, therefore I am" - we don't want to be close to a person in a truly intimate sense, but once the connection is disconnected and sharing is cut off, the self disappears. ;