A typical anecdote you'll hear from the RP-sphere is that women have become narcissistic and sociopathically inclined since the online dating market has emerged. Or more accurately, that they've always been like that -- but that modern technology and quick 'swipe-right for a hot dude' mentality has enabled the behavior.

Are women becoming more narcissistic because of this behavior, or because Generation X parents tended to raise Millennials and Generation Zers in single-child or two-child families and were given an abnormal amount of attention in infancy and adolescence? Or is it because modern gender roles are leading women to take on the same roles as men? Consumerism?

Professor Twenge acknowledges that as part of their normal development 18- and 19-years-olds are generally self-focused and narcissistic, but she says they are a lot more narcissistic now than they were in previous generations. They also found that men scored a little higher in narcissism than women, but women are catching up fast.

Stevenson and Wolfers found that American women – of all social classes, ages and whether they worked, stayed home, had kids or did not – had seen a decline in happiness since the early 70s. Thirty years ago, women reported higher rates of subjective wellbeing than men in the US. This advantage has been entirely eroded, and in many instances it is now men who are happier than women. So how did women manage to end up, after a generation of advances in gender equality, less happy typically than their mothers at their age?

(cont.)

This latter is key to the work of another American psychologist, Jean Twenge, whose most recent work has been to analyse what she describes as a "narcissism epidemic" in the US that is disproportionately affecting women. Her meta-analysis covered 37,000 college students. It found that in 1982, 15% got high scores on a narcissism personality index; by 2006 it was 25% – and the largest share of this increase was women.

Or do you have some other explanation for the increase? Remember, the topic is not who is more narcissistic -- it's why is there a general increase in narcissism, and why is this growth more centered on the female gender?

Sources: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/jul/26/women-wellbeing-unhappiness

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/allinthemind/young-people-today-are-more-narcissistic-than-ever/5457236

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/narcissism-the-science-behind-the-rise-of-a-modern-epidemic-a6925606.html