New Yorkers Are a Bunch of Narcissists (Or Somebody’s Just Jealous)

Today in psychological studies from the New York Post, there’s an intriguing exploration of how full of yourself you must be if you live in New York City. Because a person can’t, just, like, move here for a job or something. Anyway, according to the Post, “There is reason to believe that New York City may have a higher level of people with narcissistic personality disorder than other cities,” says Frank Yeomans, director of training at the Personality Disorders Institute of Weill Medical College.

Here’s how to tell if you’re a rabid narcissist New Yorker like Bernie Madoff (except he’s really probably a sociopath) or Lady Gaga (except she’s really just super-famous), in just nine questions. It’s the easiest “therapy” that you will ever have the extensive pleasure of being associated with you! If you answer yes to five of the following, from the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV, you may suffer from narcissistic personality disorder:

* Do you have a grandiose sense of self-importance?

* Are you preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love?

* Do you believe that you are special and unique?

* Do you require excessive admiration?

* Do you have a sense of entitlement?

* Are you inter-personally exploitative?

* Do you lack empathy?

* Are you often envious of others?

* Do you exhibit arrogance and/or haughty behaviors or attitudes?

Yes? Pat yourself on the back, you’re a narcissist! And you deserve it! Some other things you might do as a narcissist (this is not a professional diagnosis):

• Talk about your hair a lot (See Trump).
• Wear clothes with pictures of you on them (see Lady Gaga).
• Be Paris Hilton (fine, be any celebrity).
• Insist on buying a refrigerator magnet with your name on it whenever you’re at the airport (See you know who you are).
• Move to New York, where you can get away from the oppressive family that keeps you “in check” and the small-town people who will “shame you” (see, this is why we don’t go home for Thanksgiving).
• Have a handbag line (seriously, you’re starting a handbag line?).
• Want people to think you’re cool/fun/great (see anyone).
• Quickly end friendships with jerks who stab you in the back (see Real Housewives, any city).
• Spend a lot of time on Facebook and Twitter (See people who work on the Internet).
• Have a love child with a member of your household staff and then hide it from your wife for 10 years (no comment).
• Live in a fifth-floor 250-square-foot walk-up apartment and subsist on canned soup while you try to make your dreams come true (yawn).
• Stare at yourself in the mirror all the time (see people who have trouble putting on eye liner).
• Make out with yourself in the mirror while doing so (OK, this is where we draw the line).

Of course, all of this kind of makes us wonder, if you’re not a little bit of a narcissist, why are you here in the first place? You must be miserable!

All about me! [NYP]