Teaching and Learning Guide for: How Should We Study Generational ‘Changes’– Or Should We? A Critical Examination of the Evidence for ‘Generation Me’

This guide accompanies the following article: M. Brent Donnellan and Kali H. Trzesniewski, How Should We Study Generational ‘Changes’– Or Should We? A Critical Examination of the Evidence for ‘Generation Me’, Social and Personality Psychology Compass 3 (2009): 1–10, 10.1111/j.1751‐9004.2009.00238.x Author’s Introduction There is enduring interest in the associations between personality development and ‘macrolevel’ factors related to history and culture. These kinds of associations are known as birth cohort effects and the basic idea is that individuals born in say the 1980s are somehow different than individuals born in the 1970s because of differential exposure to historical events and cultural trends. Cohort effects involve broad generalizations to a large and often heterogeneous class of people (i.e., all people born in the 1980s and 1990s) and this creates special issues concerning how such research is conducted, interpreted, and presented to the general public. These issues provide the background for the current paper which covers both methodological and substantive considerations regarding the study of cohort effects as they relate to Twenge’s characterizations of the psychological characteristics of today’s youth. The first sections of the article cover some of the methodological issues involved in the study of cohort effects with a particular emphasis on the kinds of inferences that can be drawn from the convenience samples that are routinely used in social and personality psychology. The interpretation of effect sizes as an alternative approach to null hypothesis significance testing is also addressed. These opening sections conclude by considering the evidence for changes in global self‐esteem in the Monitoring the Future project. The second sections provide counterpoints to some of the criticisms of our work that were specifically offered by Twenge (2008). Recommended Readings Essential reading Twenge, J. M. (2008). Generation Me, the origins of birth cohort differences in personality traits, and cross‐temporal meta‐analysis . Social and Personality Psychology Compass , 2/3, 1440–1454. DOI: 10.1111/j.1751‐9004.2008.00094.x Several sections of the current paper provide responses to issues raised in this paper. Students might find a side by side comparison of the two papers interesting. Such an approach might promote lively discussion and debate. To be sure, familiarity with Twenge (2008) provides a broader context for the current article. Readings related to methodological points Donaldson, G., & Horn, J. L. (1992). Age, cohort, and time developmental muddles: Easy in practice, hard in theory. Experimental Aging Research , 18, 213–222. This piece provides a relatively accessible introduction to definitions of age, cohort, and period effects in developmental research. One caution is that the material is still fairly technical. Fraley, R. C., & Marks, M. J. (2007). The null hypothesis significance‐testing debate and its implications for personality research. In R. W. Robins, R. C. Fraley & R. F. Krueger (Eds.), Handbook of Research Methods in Personality Psychology (pp. 149–169). New York: Guilford Press. This chapter offers an accessible overview of the debate concerning statistical significance testing in psychology and provides an introduction to alternative approaches for evaluating the importance of research findings. Hyde, J. S. (2005). The gender similarities hypothesis. American Psychologist , 60, 581–592. This paper describes the calculation and interpretation of effect sizes in a controversial domain of psychology – the presence of gender differences. We argue that parallel arguments apply to the presence of cohort‐related differences. Kruglanski, A. W. (1975). The human subject in the psychology experiment: Fact and artifact. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology , 8, 101–147. This work describes the distinction between particularistic versus universalistic research that we reiterate in our paper. Mook, D. G. (1983). In defense of external invalidity. American Psychologist , 38, 379–387. This classic paper describes one commonly accepted rationale for conducting laboratory studies and provides a context for thinking about the issue of external validity. Sears, D. O. (1986). College sophomores in the laboratory: Influences of a narrow data base on social psychology’s view of human nature. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 51, 515–530. This is another classic paper that offers a controversial perspective on the potential limitations imposed by a heavy reliance on college student samples for research in social and personality psychology. Papers related to substantive points Arnett, J. J. (2007). Suffering, selfish, slackers? Myths and reality about emerging adults. Journal of Youth and Adolescence , 36, 23–29. This essay provides an optimistic perspective on emerging adulthood from one of the leading scholars on the topic. Cain, N. M., Pincus, A. L., & Ansell, E. B. (2008). Narcissism at the crossroads: Phenotypic description of pathological narcissism across clinical theory, social/personality psychology, and psychiatric diagnosis. Clinical Psychology Review , 28, 638–656. This review article provides an overview of the issues related to the description and measurement of narcissism with a particular emphasis on clinical perspectives. Eibach, R. P., Libby, L. K., & Gilovich, T. D. (2003). When change in the self is mistaken for change in the world. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 84, 917–931. This empirical article describes the apparently long history of the perception of generational declines and provides a social cognitive explanation for these perceptions. We suspect that social cognitive factors like those identified by Eibach and colleagues may partially explain the appeal of ‘Generation Me’ type perspectives. Raskin, R., & Terry, H. (1988). A principal‐components analysis of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 54, 890–902. This paper describes the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, the measure of normal narcissism that is used in the vast majority of research in social and personality psychology concerning narcissism. Trzesniewski, K. H., Donnellan, M. B., & Robins, R. W (2008). Is ‘Generation Me’ really more narcissistic than previous generations? Journal of Personality , 76, 903–917. This paper serves as a commentary on the cross‐temporal meta‐analysis of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (see below). Twenge, J. M., Konrath, S., Foster, J. D., Campbell, W. K., & Bushman, B. J. (2008). Egos inflating over time: A cross‐tem

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