A New Book Makes a Disturbing Claim About Baby Boomers' Personalities
In recent years, millennials have been a favorite topic of discussion in the media, with coverage often categorizing the generation as narcissistic, lazy, and entitled. The "Me Generation" has been criticized for its dependence on smartphones and obsession with selfies, and because of the number of adults who still live with their parents, among other reasons. While an increasingly tech-focused world is often blamed for the rise of this so-called self-centered generation, one writer is now putting forth research to suggest another reason for millennial narcissism: their parents.
According to The Huffington Post, writer and venture capitalist Bruce Gibney has released a new book titled A Generation of Sociopaths that cites mental health data suggesting that baby boomers are unusually sociopathic, both individually and as a group. The research posits that the original "Me Generation," which New York magazine writer Tom Wolfe labeled baby boomers back in the mid-1970s, exhibits higher levels of antisocial traits and behaviors-such as lack of empathy, disregard for others, egotism, and impulsivity-than generations of the past.
"For the boomers―the youngest are in their 50s and the oldest are in their 70s―we have a coherent body of data, collected over decades, that map onto this diagnostic criteria of sociopathy," Gibney, a Gen-Xer, told The Huffington Post. "So we can see sociopathy-associated traits like improvidence―there is no greater improvidence than failing to save for your retirement. We can postulate the checklist that way. We have an enormous amount of data about the boomer mainstream, and it matches up surprisingly well with the description of antisocial personality disorder."
So how does a generation of 76 million people come to collectively exhibit "sociopathic" traits, according to Gibney? His study focuses mainly on white, middle-class baby boomers, who make up a majority of the "boom" and were raised in a fairly homogenous way, he says. "They were the first generation in the U.S. to be raised permissively," Gibney says. "And the evidence strongly suggests that highly permissive parenting leads to some problems later on in life. These people have higher self-esteem, but they tend to be more rebellious and messy, both in the literal sense and in their approach to their own affairs. They were also the first generation to be raised with television, and there really weren't parental reservations about screen time. The literature on TV and cognitive and behavioral development is almost universally negative."
Gibney also argues that many boomers formed assumptions during their early childhoods that lead to the overarching belief that "things are going to work out, no matter what."
"For the first half of the boomers particularly, they came of age in a time of fairly effortless prosperity, and they were conditioned to think that everything gets better each year without any real effort," Gibney says.
While Gibney insists that baby boomers are unique in this collective psychological pattern, it's important to note that his argument is by no means perfect, as the Huffington Post points out. Widespread psychological testing wasn't as common prior to the boomers, so data on older generations isn't available, meaning it's impossible to know what kind of psychological issues or trends may have been present in the past. But whether you find Gibney's hypothesis fascinating or simply ridiculous, it's undeniable that A Generation of Sociopaths will be one of the most controversial books out this year.
(h/t The Huffington Post)
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