The difference between narcissism and self-esteem

One often sees people who think that they are superior to others and that they deserve special treatment. If they don’t get the special treatment they expect, they may get angry or even violent. 

There are two hypotheses that explain why people become like this. The first is that narcissism is caused by parental over valuation of the person in early years. The second points a finger at parental warmth as the cause.

So researchers looked at children and their parents to settle the argument. This phenomenon emerges when the children are between 7 years to 12 years of age. So researchers collected data from 565 such children and their parents - data on narcissism, self esteem, parental over valuation and parental warmth as reported by the children and parents.

What they find it that there is indeed a connection between parental over valuation of the child and the child showing narcissistic behavior. They seem to internalize the parents’ perception and start believing that they are indeed superior to others.  

The researchers found that parental warmth, however, did not produce the same results as parental over valuation. Instead of being narcissistic, the children acquire high self-esteem and are confident about themselves, with parental warmth. 

For details see the latest issue of PNAS -  http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/03/05/1420870112

Stop my mind from wandering where it will go….

The Beatles, of the famous music group, were influenced by concepts of yoga and meditation. To hold your mind still is not an easy task. The mind wanders where it will go. If you are a student and are listening to a lecture, the wanderings of the mind could be academically costly. But often, the wandering mind finds connections between the old and new information, leading to discoveries. A wandering mind sometimes finds rich fields for creativity in its reveries.  And if you cannot allow your mind to ponder on the tasks ahead in your office while travelling in busy city streets, you will become totally stressed out by the noise and unproductive in your work. Can you imagine a childhood without daydreams?

The execution of most mechanical tasks is usually handed over to the lower parts of the brain, releasing the higher parts that control thoughts to wander. So this ability must reside somewhere in the forebrain. Scientists use different methods to investigate this phenomenon. Using the now famous fMRI technique, scientists had found that the brain just above and between the eyes (medial frontal) and just where your hair starts receding first (dorsolateral prefrontal), there are activities related to daydreaming. But it remained a correlation. There was no clear evidence of causation of day dreaming by prefrontal cortex. 

Now I find a paper which uses a low voltage electric current – not the alternating one that supplies your house, but a direct current – on nearly 50 volunteers. Entry point of the current is on the rise on your left hairline, under which lie the dorsolateral frontal cortex of the brain, The cathode or exit point for the current is above the right eye. The current is passed for 20 minutes. The volunteers are supposed to press a key every time they see any number other than 3 flashed on a monitor. And they have to do this for 40 minutes.

Such a boring task! Designed to create opportunities for thoughts unrelated to the task emerging in one’s mind!  And indeed, the mind wandering reported by the volunteers increased. They repeated the experiment with sham stimulation, and with the entry point of the current is the back of the head, above, what scientists call, occipital lobe. But these had no effect on the tendency to day dream. For details see PNAS vol. 112 no. 11, pages 3314–3319, March 17, 2015 

So then, this is really a neat trick to start my mind from wandering. But what about it in case I want to stop my mind from wandering, like Beatles? Is plugging the holes where the rain gets in the only way? Will, in the near future, such trans-cranial stimulation with low voltage direct current, be a boon to students who are forced to attend boring lectures?