lessKindness

“Changes in Dispositional Empathy in American College Students Over Time: A Meta-Analysis,” by Sara Konrath, a researcher at the University of Michigan , found that college students today are 40 percent less empathetic than those of 30 years ago, with the numbers plunging primarily after 2000.

Inclined to believe today’s young ’uns are blindingly self-aggrandizing and entitled?

Previous studies have documented an increasing narcissism among college students since the late 1980s.

Is it a cognitive mechanism through which we imagine how another person feels?

But the authors speculate a millennial mixture of video games, social media, reality TV and hyper-competition have left young people self-involved, shallow and unfettered in their individualism and ambition.

But for the purposes of this study, Dr. Konrath measured four aspects of “interpersonal sensitivity”: Empathic concern, or sympathy, over the misfortunes of others; perspective taking, an intellectual capacity to imagine other people’s points of view; fantasy or people’s tendency to identify imaginatively with fictional characters in books or movies; and personal distress, which refers to the anguish one feels during others’ misfortunes.

But the authors speculate a millennial mixture of video games, social media, reality TV and hyper-competition have left young people self-involved, shallow and unfettered in their individualism and ambition.

“I’m not surprised,” said Dr. Bruce Perry, a child psychiatrist and an author of a new book “Born to Love: Why Empathy Is Essential — and Endangered.”

But the authors speculate a millennial mixture of video games, social media, reality TV and hyper-competition have left young people self-involved, shallow and unfettered in their individualism and ambition.

Inclined to believe today’s young ’uns are blindingly self-aggrandizing and entitled?

A manifestation of sympathy?

Vindication for crotchety Gen-Xers — already depressed to find themselves the elders in this social relationship — arrived in a paper presented in May at the annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science in Boston.

And Americans in general perceive decreases in other people’s kindness and helpfulness.