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Why Justin Bieber is the perfect narcissist

Why Justin Bieber is the perfect narcissist
 
I have been researching and writing quite a bit lately on Narcissism. I am particularly interested in how to recognize them from their nonverbal behavior and how those behaviors may assist them in becoming successful.
 
Why Justin Bieber is the perfect narcissist
Beliebe in the academic research on self-infatuation
Consider the Bieber. The 19-year-old pop star has repeatedly engaged in reckless behavior with little consideration for those around him, regularly pairs tank tops with gold chains, and once said that if Anne Frank were alive today, she "would have been a Belieber."
In other words, he is a massive narcissist. (Also in this category: Miley Cyrus). But how did he get that way?
Luckily, there is a wealth of academic information that explains the self-absorbed media sensation that is Justin Bieber. Let's look at the four qualities researchers have recently linked with a high probability of narcissism.
Creativity
In a new study published in the journal Thinking Skills and Creativity, British researchers found that people who think of themselves as creative and who engage in creative activities are more likely to display narcissistic tendencies.
First, subjects were asked to rate how creative they were, and how many creative activities (like writing a poem or choreographing a dance) they had participated in over the last year. Then they were asked to answer questions from the Narcissistic Personality Inventory.
It turns out that agreeing with statements like "I am more capable than other people" was "the variable that most strongly predicted not only self-assessed creativity (no surprise there), but also engagement in creative activities," according to Tom Jacobs at Pacific Standard.
In a previous study, Cornell researchers found that narcissistic people were better at selling their creative ideas — in this case, movie concepts. Ideas were accepted more often when pitched by a narcissist, even when judged unimpressive on paper. Jacobs sums up the link between narcissism and creativity thusly:
There's no evidence at this point that narcissists are more creative than the rest of us. But there is evidence that they think they are, and that that belief drives them to try their hand at various creative pursuits. [Pacific Standard]
Wealth
Another sign of narcissism: Wealth. This summer, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, published a study that showed that people who were wealthy scored higher on a series of four tests meant to measure narcissism. One them involved a mirror, which moneyed subjects were more likely to use before getting their picture taken.
Not only that, the effects scaled up, meaning that "the wealthier you were, the more entitled and narcissistic you were," according to PBS.
Obsession with social media
Research has also shown that narcissists are more active on social media. The young and self-absorbed especially prefer Twitter, which one study called a "means of amplifying one's own perceived superiority to others."

Facebook, on the other hand, was used by narcissists to curate a positive image of themselves. Science has yet to determine where Instagram selfies rank against other social media phenomena, but considering the top hashtag on Instagram is #me, there is a good chance there is a link to narcissistic behavior.
Youth
Speaking of young people, a study by San Diego State University professor Jean M. Twenge found that millennials scored 30 percent higher on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory than young people from the 1970s. More college students today, according to Twenge, rank themselves as "above average" and use more first-person singular pronouns in their writing.
Not everyone agrees with her research. Some critics point out that young people are intrinsically more self-absorbed than older people, no matter the generation, while others note that she only talked to young people from elite colleges, who don't represent millennials as a whole.
Of course, any of these academic studies could be overturned in the future. Like IQ tests, many question whether the Narcissistic Personality Inventory is flawed.
Still, the research over the past few years does paint a pretty convincing picture of what makes a person narcissistic. A millennial singer with a huge social media following who has enough money to crash his Ferrari into a photographer? Yeah, that sounds like this guy:


Patti Wood, MA, Certified Speaking Professional - The Body Language Expert. For more body language insights go to her website at www.PattiWood.net. Check out Patti's website for her new book "SNAP, Making the Most of First Impressions, Body Language and Charisma" at www.snapfirstimpressions.com. Also check out Patti's YouTube channel at http://youtube.com/user/bodylanguageexpert.

Why We Like Round Curvy Shapes, Attraction

Why We Like Round curvy Shapes, Attraction


It not only effects the way we look at art, but it effects and may be because of what we find attractive.


Do our brains find some shapes more beautiful than others?
And what exactly is happening in our brains when we look at these shapes?




Patti Wood, MA, Certified Speaking Professional - The Body Language Expert. For more body language insights go to her website at www.PattiWood.net. Check out Patti's website for her new book "SNAP, Making the Most of First Impressions, Body Language and Charisma" at www.snapfirstimpressions.com. Also check out Patti's YouTube channel at http://youtube.com/user/bodylanguageexpert.

How We Should Wash Our Hands and Just How Bad We Are At Washing Them

How We Should Wash Our Hands and Just How Bad We Are At Washing Them

Shaking Hands with All Those Pesky Germs Out There Seems Like a Scary Thing to do
I am a body language expert and I wrote the book SNAP about first impressions. I tell my clients to shake hands to bond and create rapport with people quickly. I have done years of research on handshakes so I think you should read this article and learn how to properly wash your hands and you might want that that person in the rest room with your to wash their hands as well.
Here is the research on germs a
We are very, very bad at washing our hands, says science
A whopping 95 percent of people are doing it wrong



Patti Wood, MA, Certified Speaking Professional - The Body Language Expert. For more body language insights go to her website at www.PattiWood.net. Check out Patti's website for her new book "SNAP, Making the Most of First Impressions, Body Language and Charisma" at www.snapfirstimpressions.com. Also check out Patti's YouTube channel at http://youtube.com/user/bodylanguageexpert.

Is It Time for Doctors to Ditch the White Coat? First Impressions in Health Care



Is It Time for Doctors to Ditch the White Coat? First Impressions in Health Care

You go to the doctor and he or she walks into the room with that clinical white coat. How does that effect their first impression? And how does that effect you as the patient. You may know that I speak on body language and patient care so I particularly interested in the latest research on doctors white coats.


Is it time for doctors to ditch the white coat?
The traditional uniform is causing more problems than you think


Anyone who has considered medicine as a career imagines walking into a white, clean exam room with the power to comfort and heal the sick. To add to this angelic fantasy, we do not forget to imagine ourselves wearing a freshly laundered white coat bearing what only many years of arduous education and sleepless nights can provide: First name, last name, M.D.
The white coat is a badge of perseverance, intelligence, empowerment, and authority — for new interns, a reassurance that they have what it takes to take care of the life of another. But this Victorian symbol of purity and sanitation may soon go the way of the lobotomy.
I recently returned from an interview at Mayo Clinic, where I was surprised to see so many business suits. As one of the world's meccas for medicine and health care, I expected a place that resembled, well, a hospital. Instead I encountered what appeared to be a fancy hotel with a curiously large number of wheelchairs.
The rationale behind the white coat restriction makes sense given Mayo's dedication to providing the best for patient care and comfort. The organization's philosophy: The white coat builds a barrier between patient and physician, increasing the chances for the patient to feel anxious.
And Mayo patients seem to like it. Surveys have found that patients felt most comfortable when physicians wore scrubs, followed by semi-formal/business attire, then followed last by white coats. In order to maintain its high standards of professionalism, Mayo went with the suit and eschewed the white coat. (The only ones who can wear white coats in public are those in scrubs coming from or going to the OR.)
In a separate 2005 report published in the British Medical Journal, researchers found that patients preferred doctors wearing semiformal attire — defined as dark pants and long-sleeved shirt with a tie for men, and dark-colored skirts or pants with a blouse for women. Those ensembles beat out the white coat, formal wear, and casual attire.
Mayo is not alone in recognizing the symbolic power of the white coat. As Jean-Phillip Okhovat, a UCLA medical student, puts it, "I think the white coat creates an immediate sense of hierarchy. Not wearing a white coat makes it less intimidating for the parent and child."
In psychiatry, the white coat can not only add to this patient-physician barrier, but also become a target of aggression for patients with a history of troubled visits to the doctor. Yang Yu, a University of California, Irvine, medical student, recalls, "Mentally ill patients can perceive the white coat as a threat. There have been instances of people in white coats who were attacked."
Inevitably, when the topic of white coats comes up, the issue of spreading infections is never far away. Even as someone who works in health care, the white coat can sometimes make me cringe. I have no idea how many hundreds of patients that coat rubbed up against, and sometimes I can tell that the coat has not been washed in weeks. The gloves get changed, the paper on the examination bed gets rolled out, and copious amounts of hand sanitizer are used, but none of that may matter if the biggest culprit is right on the doctor's clothes.
In one study, researchers found that doctor's white coats were contaminated with all kinds of bacteria, including Staphylococci resistant to penicillin, erythromycin, and clindamycin. The worst areas were the sides of the white coat, the cuffs, collars, and pockets.
The National Health Service in the U.K. has already banned the use of long-sleeved white coats, and instead adopted a "bare below the elbows" rule to reduce unnecessary infections. The NHS also requires that doctors leave their uniforms at the workplace, where it is regularly laundered to reduce cross-contamination. This policy has already shown a marked reduction in infections. (I should mention, however, that despite evidence showing that white coats harbor bacteria, many professionals remain unconvinced that this makes a difference in terms of nosocomial infections.)
Every July and August of each year, recently admitted medical students don fresh white coats to symbolize the beginnings of this arduous yet rewarding journey toward becoming a physician. But the tone is changing as physicians continuously ask themselves how best to serve their patients. As Don Berwick, a Harvard Medical School professor and former Administrator of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, put it at the commencement for the Yale School of Medicine in 2010:
Those who suffer need you to be something more than a doctor; they need you to be a healer. And to become a healer, you must do something even more difficult than putting your white coat on. You must take your white coat off.
When you take off that white coat in the sacred presence of those for whom you will care — in the sacred presence of people just like you — when you take off that white coat, and tower not over them, but join those you serve, you become a healer in the world of fear and fragmentation.

Is it time for doctors to ditch the white coat?
The traditional uniform is causing more problems than you think













Patti Wood, MA, Certified Speaking Professional - The Body Language Expert. For more body language insights go to her website at www.PattiWood.net. Check out Patti's website for her new book "SNAP, Making the Most of First Impressions, Body Language and Charisma" at www.snapfirstimpressions.com. Also check out Patti's YouTube channel at http://youtube.com/user/bodylanguageexpert.

Is Norman Bates a Realistic Psychopath? How Movies Portray Psychopaths and Psychologist Define Them



Is Norman Bates a Realistic Psychopath?
How Movies Portray Psychopaths and How Psychologist Can Use Movies to Help with a diagnosis.
I have studied the movies and the creative career of Alfred Hitchcock with a fascination that help prepare me for my TV interviews on HLN analyzing suspected Murderers. I have written extensively about narcissism and find this research fascinating. If you like the article you may want to pick up the nonfiction book The Murder Room about a real life secret society of experts who solve cold case murders. But don't, absolutely don't read the book in bed and then try to go to sleep.

Is Norman Bates a realistic psychopath?
A new study examines 400 movies to see whether Hollywood gets psychopathy right


Pycho's psycho leaves a lot to be desired.
At least that's the conclusion of a new study that tried to determine realistic portrayals of psychopathic behavior on the silver screen. According to forensic psychiatrists Samuel Leistedt and Paul Linkowski, who led a team that studied hundreds of films, Norman Bates was too delusional and disconnected from reality to qualify as being a psychopath. The world's most famous mama's boy, if they had to diagnosis him, was more psychotic than psychopathic.
Bates isn't alone. Psychopathy isn't what most movies make it out to be, Leistedt and Linkowski say, and most psychos in film, especially in the medium's early days, are either caricatures or based on a poor or incomplete understanding of the disorder. And because the definition of psychopathy has changed over the years, movie psychos from one era might be diagnosed differently today.
To gauge the realism of movie psychos and see how their portrayals have evolved, Leistedt and Linkowski put together a team of forensic psychiatrists and movie critics to watch 400 movies dating from 1915 to 2010. The majority of psychopathic characters were ignored because they had magical powers, were nonhuman, or were otherwise way too unrealistic. The 126 characters that were left got a closer look from the team to find the most accurate psychopaths.
Aside from giving screenwriters and actors an idea of what they're doing right or wrong, the researchers hope that their work can be a useful teaching tool for psychology and psychiatry students. Diagnosing and recognizing psychopathy isn't easy, and very few students will get to see the real deal during their training. A library of the best movie psychos could be the next best thing — and a lot safer.
Here are a few of the movie psychopaths that the study deemed realistic, and those that were the stuff of fantasy.

Realistic psychopaths

1. Anton Chigurh, No Country for Old Men. The bolt pistol-toting hit man was called out for a frighteningly realistic portrayal of a damaged mind. Leistedt and Linkowski call him a "well-designed prototypical idiopathic/primary psychopath," who displays an " incapacity for love, absence of shame or remorse, lack of psychological insight, inability to learn from past experience, cold-blooded attitude, ruthlessness, total determination, and lack of empathy." Chigurh reminded them of real-life contract killers they've studied, like Richard "The Iceman" Kuklinski.
2. Gordon Gekko, Wall Street. "One of the most interesting, manipulative, psychopathic fictional characters to date," say Leistedt and Linkowski. "Successful psychopaths" and "corporate psychopaths" like Gekko are getting more attention from filmmakers and clinicians alike in the wake of global economic crisis, and the researchers expect to see more figures like this pop up in both movies and newspaper headlines.
3. Henry, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. The title character, inspired by real-life serial killer Henry Lee Lucas, shows a "powerful lack of empathy, emotional poverty, and a well-illustrated failure to plan ahead" that faithfully reflects the lack of stability in a psychopath's life.
4. Hans Beckert, M. "One of the first, rarest, and more realistic" portrayals before the 1960s, the character is an "outwardly unremarkable man tormented by a compulsion to murder children ritualistically, which is a substantially more realistic depiction of what would eventually be known today as a sexually violent predator (SVP)."

A little too crazy

1. Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers and other "slashers." On the whole, slasher films stray pretty far from realistic psychopathy. Even if you ignore the supernatural elements in some of the movies, the killers' sadism and "ability to predict the plan that the future victims will use to escape" left most of them excluded from serious analysis.
2. Hannibal Lecter, Silence of the Lambs. "Lecter is an exceptionally intelligent sophisticated socialite, whose disarming charisma, erudition, civility, and wit disguise his true nature," Leistedt and Linkowski say — and that's not a combination you'll often find in the real world. Lecter is not only an unrealistic psychopath, but also a poor depiction of a psychiatrist. He's "an extraordinarily astute clinician who can diagnose Jodie Foster's psychological conflicts by identifying her perfume and assessing her shoes and clothing with Holmesian accuracy." These abilities, Leistedt and Linkowski dryly note, "are not generally found in everyday clinical practice."



Patti Wood, MA, Certified Speaking Professional - The Body Language Expert. For more body language insights go to her website at www.PattiWood.net. Check out Patti's website for her new book "SNAP, Making the Most of First Impressions, Body Language and Charisma" at www.snapfirstimpressions.com. Also check out Patti's YouTube channel at http://youtube.com/user/bodylanguageexpert.