In the late 80s, the movie Wall Street introduced us to Gordon Gekko, a banker whose motto "Greed is good," is often used as mascot to highlight the selfishness of the young people of that generation.
But did they get it wrong? According to a new research study, the most selfish generation may just be the Millenials:
The researchers examined survey data collected since 1975 from high school seniors, as part of the University of Michigan's Monitoring the Future project, and, beginning in 1966, from college freshmen, as part of the American Freshman survey by the University of California, Los Angeles.
Data on life goals showed a shift away from those related to intrinsic values — such as developing a meaningful philosophy of life — and toward more extrinsic ones, such as being well-off financially — over the three generations.
"Compared to boomers, millennials and Gen Xers viewed goals concerned with money, fame and image as more important, and goals concerned with self-acceptance, affiliation, and community as less important," wrote the researchers in a study published online March 5 by the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
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Twenge's research was something I stumbled upon when my father bought me the epidemic as a gift. It precluded a bunch of study into different branches of academic psychology. I had been studying mostly evolutionary psychology but realized that there were other descriptive methods that were highly potent and rivaled the success of evolutionary psychology. Ultimately they are all complimentary to each other but I appreciate familiarity with them all. My current area of interest is modern social interactionist psychology which draws on the earlier work of Cooley and Herbert Mead. i.e. The Looking Glass Self, Self-Determination Theory, Dramatism/Dramaturgy.
Basically; it's about maintenance and differentiation of social identities, group dynamics, but more importantly the conscious and subconscious dynamics psycho-emotional dynamics of the mind, studying that along side neuroanatomy. My two main sources are: The Handbook of Self and Identity by Mark R. Leary and Neuroanaomty Through Clinical Cases by Hal Blumenfeld. Crazy interesting stuff!