Narcissists tend to remain narcissists all through life, though they mellow a bit with age, a new study suggests. Researchers analyzed years of data involving more than 37,000 participants around the world and found that the trait of narcissism remains relatively stable from childhood into old age, reports the New York Times. While older narcissists showed improvement, researchers say the changes were gradual and relatively slight, per the BBC.
"When you look back at how a close friend behaved 20 or 30 years earlier, you might notice the change," says Ulrich Orth of the University of Bern in Switzerland, lead author of the paper in the journal Psychological Bulletin. "Still, the average decline was at most of moderate size, so you wouldn't expect that people's level of narcissism changes fundamentally."
The study looked at three different types of narcissism, including agentic, which is characterized by feelings of grandiosity, superiority, and self-importance, per the American Psychological Association and might be what most people think of when they think of narcissism. The others were antagonistic narcissism (think arrogance, entitlement, and low empathy); and neurotic narcissism ("emotional dysregulation and hypersensitivity"). Researchers found moderate declines over time for those in the latter two categories, and a smaller decline in agentic narcissists, per the APA. (More narcissism stories.)
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
