Why do narcissists disregard social-etiquette norms? A test of two explanations for why narcissism relates to offensive-language use

Narcissists often fail to abide by norms for polite social conduct, but why? The current study addressed this issue by exploring reasons why narcissists use more offensive language (i.e., profanity) than non-narcissists. In this study, 602 participants completed a survey in which they responded on a measure of trait narcissism, rated several offensive words on the degree to which the words were attention-grabbing and offensive, and then indicated how frequently they used the words. Consistent with the idea that narcissists use offensive language to gain attention, narcissists were incrementally more likely to use offensive language if they perceived such language to be highly attention-grabbing, and they were also more likely to perceive offensive language as attention-grabbing. Consistent with the idea that narcissists use more offensive language because they are less sensitive to the offensiveness of the language, an additional mediation analysis showed that narcissists perceived offensive language as less offensive than non-narcissists, a perception that, in turn, enhanced use of offensive language. Thus, this study provides evidence for two mechanisms that underlie narcissists’ frequent use of offensive language, and broadly contributes to the understudied issue of why narcissists violate social-etiquette norms

Interview with Dr. Dan Florell [video]

Dr. Florell, professor in the Department of Psychology at Eastern Kentucky University, received his PhD in School Psychology from Illinois State University in 2001. He has been researching the prevalence and impact of cyberbullying in adolescents and school professionals for the past few years

Ethnic Identity Influence News Selection

American news networks have been known to push a positive biased agenda towards the white population, which in turn leaves minorities displayed in various negative forms. News stations have different ways of reporting on the same story, which may lead people to choose some media outlets over others. The focus of this study was to analyze if ethnic identity influences an individual\u27s selection of news. To find this out a survey was created, the first part of the survey includes the Political Scale. This measure scales the consistency of one’s political ideologies (i.e. conservative, liberal, and neutral) using sources from news networks including NBC, ABC, and Fox. This was included to analyze which types of news minorities were most likely to give their attention to. The next part of the survey includes the Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure which was used to scale an individual’s commitment, belonging, and affirmation to one\u27s ethnic identity from one to four. Through the analysis of this survey, researchers found that as ethnic identity strength increased openness to various news sources decreased. We were unable to find a significant number of participants which highly impacted results. These findings indicate how a solidified ethnic identity could influence one’s preference and how those preferences can fluctuate depending on ethnic identity strength

Personality Factors that Predict Cyberbullying among Middle School Students

Previous research has examined different factors relating to cyber bullying, but no one has specifically looked at how empathy, exploitative narcissism, and gender contribute to cyber bullying. We hypothesize that all three factors, empathy, exploitative narcissism, and gender, will uniquely contribute to cyber bullying. Middle schoolers (n = 851) completed surveys measuring each of these factors. A series of regression analyses found that exploitative narcissism and low empathy uniquely contribute to cyber bullying. However, there was not a significant finding for gender. The results from this analysis suggest that individuals who exhibit exploitative narcissism and low empathy are more likely to partake in cyber bullying.https://encompass.eku.edu/swps_undergraduategallery/1040/thumbnail.jp

Clinician Telehealth Attitudes in a Rural Community Mental Health Center Setting.

Telehealth-based services in community mental health settings are on the rise and growth is expected to continue. Negative clinician attitudes toward telehealth have been identified as a key barrier to overall telehealth acceptance and implementation. The present study examined rural clinical mental health staff members’ attitudes toward telehealth. One hundred clinicians participated in a mixed-methods, Internet-based survey. Eighty-nine percent of respondents reported a favorable or neutral opinion of telehealth and 100% of participants reported their agency provided one or more clinical services via telehealth. Clinicians identified telehealth-related concerns about their ability to establish therapeutic alliance, software and equipment usability, associated costs, whether telehealth-delivered services were equivalent to face-to-face treatment, and HIPAA. These concerns were in line with previous research and all represent areas where additional training or knowledge could potentially address clinician apprehension. We found a strong positive correlation, r .66, p .01 between telehealth knowledge and telehealth experience. Telehealth knowledge predicted telehealth opinion (β .430, R2 .19, p .01) and an agency’s technological capability to provide services via telehealth predicted clinicians’ willingness to consider providing services via telehealth (β .390, R2 .15, p .05). Researchers and trainers should focus on increasing knowledge about the effectiveness of telehealth and providing clinicians with safe opportunities to gain comfort and competency with the technology needed to provide these types of specialized services