Prof. Chris French
speaker
118 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Apr 2025
Prof. Chris French’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
It was really a huge moment for him because he's reading all these descriptions of what makes a narcissist, at least according to Dr. Google.
And he's nodding along. So it's like you think you're special, which he definitely does think that. He's always believed he was destined for greatness. Another one is you are preoccupied with yourself. Yep. He keeps reading. Lack of empathy. That one definitely felt right. Was there an example that flashed in your mind? You're like, oh, that was the time when I was being unempathetic.
He was on the playground in school. He was watching this kid named Tony climbing on a jungle gym. And he saw that Tony was going to try to hang upside down by his legs. And he had a bad feeling about this. He didn't think Tony was strong enough to go upside down. So he told Tony to stop. But Tony did it anyway.
What were you thinking as a kid when he broke his arm?
Little Kidley was so angry and upset in this moment that he actually remembers the teacher looking at him and saying, what's wrong with you? And at the time, of course, he didn't know. But as an adult, on this day in his bedroom after the fight with his wife, he's like, wait, now I know.
And now today as an influencer, Lee talks a lot about narcissists like him and how to live with them, deal with them. And he's part of this huge trend where people cannot stop talking about narcissists. There are even people saying that we're in a narcissism epidemic. And I'm hearing about narcissists just like coming out of the woodwork. You know, our bosses, our parents, celebrities.
It's even become, like, something that comedians joke about.
Yeah, so we'll put on our little mirrors because today on the show, we're going to find out what's really going on here. Is the world truly overrun with narcissists? Are they hosting science podcasts? Beloved science podcasts? How do you know if you're one or your boss or partner is one? And if you're stuck with a narcissist in your life, what do you do about it?
So people tend to throw around the word narcissism pretty willy-nilly. But first you have to know there is some different types here. So there's pathological narcissism. That's a trait where people constantly put themselves and their own needs above other people and their needs. And it's often associated with this lack of empathy.
If that describes you, you could get diagnosed potentially with narcissistic personality disorder. And Lee actually did get that diagnosis.
But she was absolutely right. Yeah. And we are going to get more into the details of that later in the episode. But there's also what's considered basically normal narcissism, where, you know, you're like a little focused on yourself. You're quite confident, maybe to the point of being arrogant. Maybe sometimes you think you're better than other people.
Yeah, and there's a spectrum. When it comes to the garden variety narcissism, that's usually what scientists or the media are talking about when they talk about a narcissism epidemic. This question of whether lots of us are moving farther and farther up this narcissism spectrum. Okay. So, are we? So, to answer that, we got to go back to where this all started.
We are going back to the late 90s, early 2000s.
That is W. Keith Campbell. He's a professor of psychology at the University of Georgia. But back then, he was a postdoc at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, along with another social scientist named Gene Twenge.
And a lot of what they were talking about was how the culture seemed to be changing.
I know, but I think right around then, a lot of people see that as an inflection point for certain things like reality TV. So Survivor debuted in 2000. Right around there is when American Idol started, America's Next Top Model. It's like fame, fame, fame, being on TV, being special. Yes.
So Keith and Jean were like, something's changing here, and it seems like people are changing in some fundamental way.
So they really wanted to find this out, and they really wanted to get some data behind this idea. They were becoming more narcissistic. And luckily, there is this test that measures some narcissistic traits. It's called the Narcissistic Personality Inventory. And what it's meant to do is to measure these grandiose narcissistic traits. Basically, how great you think you are.
Don't you want me to take it too? How special I am on the narcissism scale. Before we take it, do you have any... Do you have any guesses who will be higher on the narcissism scale?
You never know. You never know. Okay. So the instructions are to read each pair of statements below and place an X by the one that comes closest to describing your feelings and beliefs about yourself. You may feel that neither statement describes you well, but pick the one that comes closest.
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