Trends in High Technology – Part 2
High-tech and low spirits.
The use of Facebook -- including status updates, link click counts, and “like” counts -- is negatively associated with mental health.
And entering college students have increasingly reported mental health issues.
The journal Social Psychological and Personality Science found that the percentage of college students exhibiting narcissistic personality traits, based on their scores on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, a widely used diagnostic test, has increased by more than half since the early 1980’s, to 30 percent. However, early narcissism appears to give way to greater unhappiness as young people get older today. A survey of happiness reports among older and younger people show that, whereas in the past younger people became happier when they became adults, today younger people are becoming less happy when they become adults.
As the Wall Street Journal has reported:
As many as one in four students at some elite U.S. colleges are now classified as disabled, largely because of mental-health issues such as depression or anxiety, entitling them to a widening array of special accommodations like longer time to take exams … The rise in disability notes for mental-health issues has led to a surge in the number of students who take their exams in low-distraction testing centers, are allowed to get up and walk around during class or bring a comfort animal to school, among other measures … Among the nation’s most elite institutions, those with the highest percentage of disabled students were Stanford (14%), Brown (12%), Yale (11%) and Columbia University (8%).
Researchers studying U.S. trend in anxiety found:
Notable differences in trends in anxiety were found by age (see Figure 2 and Supplementary Table 1). Among 18 to 25-year-old respondents, 7.97% in 2008 versus 14.66% in 2018 reported anxiety (p<.001). Significant increases were also noted among 26 to 34 and 35 to 49-year-old respondents (ps<.001). The increase was significantly more rapid among those ages 18-25 years than any other age group (differential time trend p<.001). In contrast to the younger age groups, anxiety remained stable among those ages 50 and older (3.60% in 2008 to 3.76% in 2018; p=0.128).
Researchers have studied the phenomenon of “virtue signaling,” a prominent phenomenon on social media. Researchers looked at "the consequences and predictors of emitting signals of victimhood and virtue" in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. As summarized by Elizabeth Nolan Brown:
The paper—from University of British Columbia researchers Ekin Ok, Yi Qian, Brendan Strejcek, and Karl Aquino—details multiple studies the authors conducted on the subject. Their conclusion? Psychopathic, manipulative, and narcissistic people are more frequent signalers of "virtuous victimhood."
The so-called "dark triad" personality traits—Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy—lead to characteristics like "self-promotion, emotional callousness, duplicity, and tendency to take advantage of others," the paper explains. And "treated as a composite, the Dark Triad traits were significant predictors of virtuous victim signaling." This held true "even when controlling for factors that may make people vulnerable to being mistreated or disadvantaged in society (i.e., demographic and socioeconomic characteristics) as well as the importance they place on being a virtuous individual as part of their self-concept," the researchers note. They point out that virtue signaling is defined as "the conspicuous expression of moral values, done primarily with the intent of enhancing one's standing within a social group." Meanwhile, victim signaling "may be used as a social influence tactic that can motivate recipients of the signal to voluntarily transfer resources to the signaler," they explain. More from the paper's theoretical background section: “An emerging literature on competitive victimhood documents the prevalence of victim signaling by various social groups and provides evidence for its functionality as a resource extraction strategy. For instance, victim signaling justifies victim groups seeking retribution against alleged oppressors. Retribution often takes the form of demanding compensation through some kind of resource transfer from nonvictims to the alleged victim. Claiming victim status can also facilitate resource transfer by conferring moral immunity upon the claimant. Moral immunity shields the alleged victim from criticism about the means they might use to satisfy their demands. In other words, victim status can morally justify the use of deceit, intimidation, or even violence by alleged victims to achieve their goals. Relatedly, claiming victim status can lead observers to hold a person less blameworthy, excusing transgressions, such as the appropriation of private property or the infliction of pain upon others, that might otherwise bring condemnation or rebuke. Finally, claiming victim status elevates the claimant's psychological standing, defined as a subjective sense of legitimacy or entitlement to speak up. A person who has the psychological standing can reject or ignore any objections by nonvictims to the unreasonableness of their demands. In contrast to victim signalers, people who do not publicly disclose their misfortune or disadvantage are less likely to reap the benefits of retributive compensation, moral immunity, deflection of blame, or psychological standing and would therefore find it difficult to initiate resource transfers. The effectiveness of victim signaling as a resource transfer strategy follows the basic principles of signaling theory. Signaling theory posits that the transmission of information from one individual (the sender) to another (the receiver) can influence the behavior of the receiver. Signals can refer to any physical or behavioral trait of the sender, and are used by the senders to alter the behaviors of others to their own advantage.”
Their results suggest that:
· "a perceived victim signal can lead others to transfer resources to a victim, but that the motivation to do so is amplified when the victim signal is paired with a virtue signal" and "people high in the Dark Triad traits emit the dual signal more frequently."
· "a positive correlation between the Dark Triad scores and the frequency of emitting the virtuous victim signal."
· "evidence of how these signals … can predict a person's willingness to engage in and endorse ethically questionable behaviors …. frequent virtuous victim signalers are more willing to purchase counterfeit products and judge counterfeiters as less immoral compared with less frequent signalers, a pattern that was also observed when using participants' Dark Triad scores instead of their signaling score," and "frequent virtuous victim signalers were more likely to cheat and lie to earn extra monetary reward in [a] coin flip game."
· "that a dimension referred to as amoral manipulation was the most reliable predictor of virtuous victim signaling."
· "frequent virtuous victim signalers were more likely to make inflated claims to justify receiving restitution for an alleged and ambiguous norm violation in an organizational context."
The authors stress that they “do not refute the claim that there are individuals who emit the virtuous victim signal because they experience legitimate harm and also conduct themselves in decent and laudable ways.”
In the next essay in this series, we’ll look at how technology can perpetuate ideological isolation.