Are the more narcissistic people lonelier

Are you a narcissist? So do you often feel lonely? In fact, the more narcissistic people are, the more lonely they are.

Recently, a cover article in Atlantic Monthly, "Does Facebook Make Us Lonelier", caused a great controversy in the United States. Novelist Steven? At the beginning of the article, Stephen Marche told the story of an old lady.

yvette? Yvette Vickers, a former model of Playboy and a Hollywood B-movie actress, died alone in her home in California. A year later, the old lady's air-dried body was discovered by neighbors and died of heart disease after forensic identification. She has no children, no religious groups and no direct social circle. Before her death, she didn't call any family or friends, but corresponded with "fans" found through the internet. Within two weeks after the news of her death was released, she became a popular figure on Facebook, with 16,57 Facebook posts and 881 Tweet discussing her death.

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

On March 18th, a girl named "Zoufan" posted a Weibo on Sina: "I'm depressed, so I'm going to die. There's no important reason. People don't have to care about my leaving. Bye-bye. "

a few days later, we learned that this girl was called Ma Jie, a post-9s college student in Nanjing, who committed suicide on March 18th, 212. Looking through her past blog, you will find that she has been asking for help on Weibo, but we just didn't "hear" it.

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

I am as lonely as a broken toilet.

am I missing? why aren't you around?

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

For her, it is hard to tell whether loneliness leads to depression or depression leads to loneliness. But loneliness and depression have obviously formed a terrible vicious circle on her: the more depressed, the more lonely, the more lonely, the more depressed.

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

Of course, we can't blame the Internet for her death, but at least let us be alert. As far as emotional comfort is concerned, our expectations for the Internet may be too high-in her Weibo, it's not that there is no one to comfort and encourage her, but the emotional support that can be given in one sentence is too frivolous for a girl with severe depression. If she was looking for the support of real feelings in the real world, would there be any different ending?

what is loneliness?

Russell described "loneliness" as a person's trembling eyes glancing at the edge of the world and penetrating into the cold and unfathomable lifeless abyss.

loneliness is the basic feature of modern people. Almost everyone will experience the pain of loneliness at some point in their lives. It can be simple and superficial, such as being the most unlikely player on the team, or the girl who will always sit in the corner at the party; It may also be sharp and violent, such as losing a spouse or close friend.

In the book Loneliness: The Need for Human Nature and Social Connection, the evolutionary psychologist John? Cacioppo likened loneliness to "hunger", and both of them are an early warning signal sent by the body to remind you of the existence of some kind of scarcity.

We need to take reasonable blood sugar as energy for metabolism and engage in various activities of living beings. When the blood sugar is not enough, we will feel hungry, which 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 even have no strength to find food, which is fatal.

loneliness and the pain and anxiety it causes warn of lack, not calories, but connections. It reminds us of the danger of being far away from the group and losing contact-in the long evolution, human ancestors relied on social cooperation rather than individual ability to survive in the cruel competition. Most neuroscientists agree that the evolution of human cerebral cortex is not to develop music, mathematics, or any kind of personal talent, but to deal with complex social information to ensure the survival of groups-without the cooperation of groups, we can't defeat dangerous beasts and reproduce our own offspring. Therefore, when you feel lonely, it is the ancient mechanism of evolution that warns you to rejoin the crowd, or you will pay the price-high blood pressure, heart disease, obesity, lack of exercise, smoking, alcoholism, and even Alzheimer's disease, all of which are related to loneliness. One of the long-term negative effects of loneliness is to damage the self-control of the brain.

different people will have different ways to deal with this signal of scarcity.

Some people are naturally tolerant of loneliness. They like being alone, but they feel uncomfortable in the crowd. Some people are natural communication experts, and only in the crowd can they feel safe. This has a lot to do with genes. In 25, a twin study conducted by the United States and the Netherlands showed that loneliness, like nervousness and anxiety, is not only the result of lack of social interaction, but also an innate component rooted in genes.

The most famous loners in the west are Thoreau, Wordsworth and Melville. Thoreau was educated at Harvard, but he went to the desolate Walden Lake to live in seclusion, building his own house, fishing, hunting and growing vegetables, and living like a primitive man. Wordsworth and his sister lived in seclusion in Lake Cumberland and Lake Grassmill, isolated from the world; Melville has been drifting at sea for many years and has been down and out all his life. But for these people, loneliness is not an unbearable pain, but a realm that is deliberately sought. Compared with their peers, mountains and rivers and plants are more congenial to their temperament, and nature is the source of joy and wisdom in life.

However, as natural social animals, most of us are more eager for the intimate relationship between people-being close to a person, being understood, being concerned and being loved.

the promise of social networks

the original meaning of the network is to eliminate loneliness. Since the birth of the Internet, it has promised us a utopia without borders. When we first learned the theory of "six dimensions", we felt that the whole world was open to you-any two people on the earth could establish contact through six people. It is a great sense of happiness-isolated individuals can communicate with each other, young artists can find soul mates, gay young people no longer feel like monsters, and everyone is not an outsider.

In the era of Facebook and Weibo, the purpose of social networking is to connect everyone-a huge social group formed around you, which means more social capital and has great value. But in this ubiquitous connection, our loneliness seems to have not diminished, and it is likely to increase. Why?

loneliness is a deep feeling, which has nothing to do with the number or frequency of connections, but with the quality and significance of connections. You can still feel deeply lonely in the noise of weddings. Marriage will alleviate a person's loneliness, but only if your marriage is happy, otherwise it will only make you more lonely. Faith can also alleviate a person's loneliness, provided that your God is an abstract and warm existence.

technology tends to simplify all the complicated things in life. Human relationships are rich and complex, which require skill, energy and patience to deal with. But in the internet age, what we lack most is patience, and what we are most stingy with is attention. Therefore, while expanding social groups, social networks inevitably lead to the flattening and superficiality of interpersonal relationships. Couples who break up just need to click "Delete" on the homepage to make each other disappear without a trace in their own world. Can you confide in the brushed fans?

it is human nature to cherish those hard-won things-a thousand dollars is easy to ask for, but a bosom friend is hard to find.

A survey in the United States found that the number of "bosom friends" decreased from 2.94 in 1985 to 2.8 in 24. Similarly, in 1985, only 1% people said that no one could discuss important issues in life, and 15% people said that there was only one such friend. By 24, these two proportions had risen to 25% and 2% respectively.

In Alone Together, Xie Li, a female professor in the Media Lab of MIT? Turk believes that the erosion of friendship by social networks is mainly through simplifying "conversation" to "connection"-in the connection of networks, we always expect a faster and simpler response. In order to get the fastest answer, we only ask the simplest questions. The dialogue is unfolding slowly, which requires patience and skill, taking time to understand the subtle changes in the other person's facial expressions and actions, 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 those boring details. Because it is when we stutter, hesitate and fail to express our meaning that we show our true selves to each other. When we recall a friend, the most touching thing is often not his words, but his eyes and body movements.

Piaget, a Swiss psychologist, found that children can't see the world from other people's perspective before the age of 8. We will eventually grow up, get rid of that stage and learn to understand and guess each other's minds. But in the era of social networks, our minds seem to be moving closer to children again. All social networks are designed on the basis of "egocentrism". Your radio, your photo album, your "fans", your aesthetic taste (favorite music, movies, TV series), the group you join? Everything is about you.

A person's mentality of waiting for a response on social networking sites is much like that of a child who wants the attention of an adult. Children always overestimate others' interest in themselves, so they invent imaginary audiences. People keep updating their status on Facebook and Weibo, as if the whole world were listening.

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

all our behaviors on social networks are just to make ourselves "seen". In the eyes of others, confirm the existence of self and get understanding, attention and love. The feeling of being loved can improve people's enthusiasm more than anything else, even if it is probably just an illusion or wishful thinking. In order to get affirmation and confirmation, we show our best selves everywhere. Existence has become a performance-basking in happiness, loving, luxury cars and luxury homes? All kinds of performances, once not responded, fall into great loss or anxiety.

Walking around the world, you will see the same scene: people are connected through keyboards and small touch screens, but everyone is in his own bubble. We don't want to be really close to a person. The eyes of others are just tools to support our fragile sense of self.

psychologists have always suspected that social networks make people more narcissistic. Not long ago, a study by Western Illinois University confirmed the direct connection between them for the first time. The researchers tracked the Facebook usage habits of 294 students, aged between 18 and 65, and measured two aspects of narcissistic personality-exaggerated exhibitionism (GE) and pretentious/squeezing desire (EE). GE includes narcissism, vanity, superiority and exhibitionism. Such people often say things that are not surprising and endless, can't stand being ignored, and don't miss any opportunities for self-promotion. EE includes "a feeling of self-esteem and a willingness to manipulate and use others".

The experimental results show that the higher the score of GE, the more friends there are on Facebook, some of whom exceed 8. The higher the score on GE and EE, the easier it is for people to accept strangers' requests for making friends on Facebook, and the more likely they are to ask for help instead of offering it.

researchers believe that besides mobile phones and social networks, the narcissism tendency of young Americans is probably related to the self-esteem education advocated by the United States in the 198s and 199s. Whether other countries do the same has not been confirmed by research. But the British have begun to complain that more and more British young people are infected with narcissism from the United States.

In the article "Does Facebook make us lonelier?", the author also mentioned a long-term follow-up study in Sweden, which showed that narcissism in youth was strongly and positively correlated with loneliness in old age. Maybe this will sound the alarm for many people.

the end of solitude?

not long ago, Shelley? Turk mentioned in TED's speech that once, she walked into a nursing home and saw a woman who had lost her child talking to a robot in the shape of a baby seal. This robot seems to look into her eyes and understand her. Many people are praising this technology. It's a robot developed in her own laboratory, and its original intention is to accompany and comfort the loneliness of the elderly. But she felt that it was the most complicated, tangled and tasteless moment in her 15 years of work-a person was trying to make a machine that had no feelings about the trajectory of human life understand her! That robot just finished a great performance. It doesn't have to face death, and it doesn't know anything about life.

it's not the first time that we have seen the appalling desolation behind the prosperity of technology. Such as Xie Li? Turk said: "What attracts us most about technology is our most vulnerable aspect. We are all vulnerable-we are lonely, but we are afraid of intimate relationships. So we invented technologies such as social networking sites and social robots, so that we can experience the illusion of being cared for and accompanied without real friendship. "

When Descartes said, "I think, therefore I am", solitude and meditation are self-exploration to gain self-integrity. Now, we are so used to the connected state that it is impossible to be alone. Even for a few seconds, people will become anxious, panic and fidgety, ready to take out their mobile phones and share their thoughts and feelings. What happened before was, "What happened before?"