In an article in last Friday’s edition of the Wall Street Journal, there appeared an article from Jeffrey Zaslow entitled, “The Most-Praised Generation Goes to Work.” (You’ll have to take my word for it, as the WSJ is one of the old-media companies that still believes there’s little value to making its articles available to others online.) It observes the interesting phenomenon of “praise inflation,” where young adults are entering the workplace expecting kudos for doing not much more than showing up to work or doing their everyday job. The article quoted Jean Twenge’s research that showed the average college student in 2006 was 30% more narcissistic than the average student in 1982 (which made headlines a few months ago; there are some issues with this research, but I won’t go into them here).

More amusingly, from my married perspective, is the following line from the article –

The Gottman Institute, a relationship-research and training firm in Seattle, tells clients that a key to marital happiness is if couples make at least five times as many positive statements to and about each other as negative ones.

Ouch. Five times more? My marriage is doomed if we’re both expected to make 5x the positive statements we make over the negative ones.

Dr. John Grohol is the CEO and founder of Psych Central. He is an author, researcher and expert in mental health online, and has been writing about online behavior, mental health and psychology issues -- as well as the intersection of technology and human behavior -- since 1992. Dr. Grohol sits on the editorial board of the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking and is a founding board member and treasurer of the Society for Participatory Medicine.

    Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 26 Apr 2007
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