The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again

by Robert D. Putnam

The most substantial quantitative evidence on this trend has been gathered by social psychologist Jean Twenge, under the rubric of The Narcissism Epidemic (coauthored with W. Keith Campbell, 2009) and Generation Me (2014). In one of her earliest studies, she cited the astonishing fact that in 1950, 12 percent of students agreed with the statement, “I am a very important person.” By 1990 that figure had risen to 80 percent!74 Twenge’s interest is not in the incidence of a clinically defined personality trait, but in broader social and cultural change: “the fight for the greater good of the 1960s” turning into “looking out for number one by the 1980s.”

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