Sander Thomaes

Utrecht University | UU · Department of Psychology

Significance Narcissistic individuals feel superior to others, fantasize about personal successes, and believe they deserve special treatment. When they feel humiliated, they often lash out aggressively or even violently. Unfortunately, little is known about the origins of narcissism. Such knowledge is important for designing interventions to curta...

In current Western society, children are often lavished with inflated praise (e.g., "You made an incredibly beautiful drawing!"). Inflated praise is often given in an attempt to raise children's self-esteem. An experiment (Study 1) and naturalistic study (Study 2) found that adults are especially inclined to give inflated praise to children with lo...

When people reflect on their important values, they may become more attuned to the needs of others. Two longitudinal field experiments examined whether a subtle value-affirmation manipulation can initiate relatively enduring increases in young adolescents' prosocial feelings (Study 1; Mage = 12.9) and prosocial behaviors (Study 2; Mage = 12.9). Par...

Narcissistic individuals are prone to become aggressive when their egos are threatened. We report a randomized field experiment that tested whether a social-psychological intervention designed to lessen the impact of ego threat reduces narcissistic aggression. A sample of 405 young adolescents (mean age = 13.9 years) were randomly assigned to compl...

Do narcissists enjoy better or worse wellbeing than others? Psychological theories disagree. In an attempt to reconcile them, we conducted a comprehensive cross-cultural meta-analysis testing the core hypotheses that grandiose narcissism would be associated with better wellbeing and vulnerable narcissism with worse wellbeing. We also hypothesized t...

Most adolescents are concerned about climate change. What helps them to act on their concerns? This preregistered randomized experiment tested whether adolescents' pro‐environmental behavior can be promoted by framing the behavior as compatible with their autonomy motive. Dutch adolescents ( N = 319, ages 12–17, 57.7% girls, predominantly indicatin...

The world is becoming less livable due to climate change and the loss of nature. What can be done to stop this environmental crisis? What would empower young people to help protect the environment? Schools and clubs sometimes offer environmental education programs—lessons or activities to help young people understand the environment and its vulnera...

Today's youth are growing up in a world threatened by climate change. Facing an uncertain future, young people—and especially adolescents—tend to be concerned about climate change, even more so than other age groups. How can socializing agents (e.g., educators, policymakers, clinicians) support and engage adolescents as they come of age in a warmin...

De klimaatcrisis is één van de grootste uitdagingen van onze tijd. Wetenschappers zijn het er over eens dat het klimaat van de aarde op dit moment sneller verandert dan ooit, voor een groot deel als gevolg van de acties van mensen. Dit heeft belangrijke gevolgen voor ons allemaal, vooral voor jongeren, die de impact van de klimaatcrisis in hun toek...

Background Climate anxiety is increasingly prevalent among adolescents worldwide. Are climate‐anxious adolescents prone to engage in pro‐environmental behavior? Or might the association between climate anxiety and pro‐environmental be curvilinear, such that high levels of climate anxiety become ‘paralyzing’? And do these associations depend on whet...

Background We examined the implementation and potential effectiveness of a school‐based targeted prevention programme addressing behaviour problems, adapted for children with mild intellectual disabilities or borderline intellectual functioning. Method Thirteen children participated. The intervention was implemented in schools. We examined interve...

Oppositional defiant problems are among the most prevalent psychological problems among children and adolescents from China and across the world. Still little is understood about how self-esteem, in conjunction with parenting experiences, develops in children with oppositional defiant problems. We addressed this gap of knowledge in a two-year longi...

Children tend to overestimate their performance on a variety of tasks and activities. The present meta‐analysis examines the specificity of this phenomenon across age, tasks, and more than five decades of historical time (1968–2021). Self‐overestimation was operationalized as the ratio between children's prospective self‐estimates of task performan...

The sustainability motive-alignment hypothesis posits that adolescents will be motivated to act sustainably when they view sustainable behavior as aligned with their motives for autonomy and peer status. Based on this hypothesis, we developed the Sustainability Motive-Alignment Scale (SMAS), a brief self-report scale of individual differences in su...

NOTE: After peer review, the manuscript was revised, resubmitted, and published. The publication is available open access at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10888691.2023.2260748 . Please refer to the published article. The sustainability motive-alignment hypothesis posits that adolescents will be internally motivated to act sustainab...

Which domain-specific self-evaluations are most central to children’s global self-worth? And does this differ between countries with different levels of collectivism–individualism? We conducted a preregistered cross-cultural meta-analysis to address these questions. We included 141 independent samples (21 countries/regions, 584 cross-sectional effe...

Communicating with adolescents about climate change can be challenging if we want to safeguard their emotional well-being. Here, we evaluate the emotional impact of climate change communication that is informed by self-determination theory (SDT). We conducted two experiments with samples of ethnically diverse adolescents from the United States to e...

Parental tradition transfer to children is pivotal for their socialization, identity formation, and culture perpetuation. But what motivates parents to transfer traditions to their children? We hypothesized that nostalgia, an emotion strengthening interpersonal bonds, would promote tradition transfer through parent-child relationship closeness. We...

Mindsets of ability (i.e., “fixed” and “growth” mindsets) play a pivotal role in students’ academic trajectories. However, relatively little is known about the mechanisms underlying mindset development. Identifying these mechanisms is vital for understanding, and potentially influencing, how mindsets emerge and change over time. In this article, we...

Young people are disproportionally impacted by heatwaves, floods, droughts, and other impacts of climate change. They also have unique potential to catalyze the transformative sustainable change that the world needs now. How can this potential be leveraged? In this perspective, we present the sustainability motive-alignment hypothesis to understand...

Young children are generally overconfident in their abilities and performances, but the reasons that underlie such self-overestimation are unclear. The current cross-cultural experiment aimed to address this issue, testing the possibility that young children’s overconfidence in task performance is, at least in part, motivated. We tested 89 Chinese...

Children with aggressive behavior problems may aggress for different reasons, requiring tailored assessment and treatment. The aim of this study was to test whether it is possible to detect distinct social information processing (SIP) profiles among boys with aggressive behavior problems. We therefore conducted Latent Profile Analyses on boys’ SIP...

Climate change skepticism hampers the sustainable change of individuals and societies. Unfortunately, little is known about its developmental origins and early psychological underpinnings. To address these issues, the present study examined the links between basic values and climate change skepticism in adolescents from three culturally, socially,...

Young people can be agents of sustainable change. To this end, environmental education programs aim to promote their environmental knowledge, attitudes, intentions, and behaviors. We synthesized five decades of research into the effectiveness of environmental education for children and adolescents. We searched PsycINFO, ERIC, and Scopus and identif...

Kinderen die geneigd zijn de intenties van anderen als vijandig te interpreteren, hebben een grotere kans om agressieve gedragsproblemen te ontwikkelen. Het is dus belangrijk de vroege ontwikkeling van een vijandige interpretatiestijl beter te begrijpen. Wij onderzochten of de gesprekken die ouders met hun kinderen voeren over het gedrag van leefti...

There is increasing consensus on the importance of distinguishing between grandiose and vulnerable subtypes of narcissism. Yet, little is known about these traits and their differential correlates in youth. Recent findings in adults suggest that narcissistic vulnerability, rather than grandiosity, is a critical determinant of internal aggression tr...

Western literature suggests that young children overestimate their performance across a range of tasks. Research in non‐Western cultures, however, is lacking. In 2019, 101 Chinese (52% girls) and 98 Dutch (49% girls) children, ages 4 and 5, were asked to estimate how well they would perform on both a motor and a memory task. Children from both coun...

There is a growing body of research showing the crucial role that students’ growth versus fixed ability-mindsets have in their school achievement, enjoyment, and resilience. The overwhelming majority of this research adopts a variable-oriented approach. As a result, little is known about how teachers and students co-regulate each other’s mindsets w...

This study contributes to the literature on the parental correlates of children’s narcissism. It addresses whether parental overvaluation may drive the putative link between parents’ narcissism and children’s narcissism and self-esteem. The cross-sectional design involved a community sample of 519 school-age children (age ranging from 9 to 11 years...

People who pursue approach goals (i.e., desired outcomes to be reached) tend to be more likely to achieve their goals than people who pursue avoidance goals (i.e., undesired outcomes to be prevented). We tested this premise in a brief preventive parenting intervention targeting parental praise to reduce disruptive child behavior. We also tested whe...

Background Children's self-views encompass two independent dimensions: self-esteem and narcissism, which recently have received growing attention from researchers and clinicians. The current study sought to test whether these dimensions might predict the developmental course of children with Oppositional Defiant Disorder diagnosis. Method The samp...

How do children with aggressive behavior problems view themselves? The present research seeks to answer this question by examining the self-views (i.e., self-esteem and narcissism) of boys referred for disruptive behavior problems. In Study 1 (N = 85, Mage= 10.8 years), we examined relations between self-views and self-reported and parent-reported...

Children with negative competence beliefs often achieve below their potential in school. This randomized field experiment tested whether engaging in positive self‐talk may benefit these children’s mathematics performance. Participants (N = 212, Grades 4–6, Mage = 10.6) worked on the first half of a standardized mathematics test, engaged in effort s...

The present study examined potential changes in narcissistic traits of Chinese youth from 2008 to 2017. A cross-temporal meta-analysis involving 29 independent samples (N = 14,795) found a downward temporal trend: Mean scores on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory and Narcissistic Personality Inventory for Chinese are significantly negatively as...

The dual-pathway model posits that narcissism can both benefit and compromise popularity, depending upon whether narcissists’ assertive or adversarial interpersonal tendencies surface in social interaction. A 5-wave longitudinal study followed Dutch adolescents (N = 322, 53% female, Mage = 12.2) who transitioned from primary into secondary school a...

Children with aggression problems tend to interpret other’s intentions as hostile in ambiguous social situations. Among clinically referred children with aggressive behavior problems, this hostile attribution style may be relatively rigid and difficult to change, due to prevalent histories of aversive social experience and/or personal vulnerability...

Two experiments tested an intervention approach to reduce young children’s hostile attribution bias and aggression: self-persuasion. Children with high levels of hostile attribution bias recorded a video-message advocating to peers why story characters who caused a negative outcome may have had nonhostile intentions (self-persuasion condition), or...

Research on childhood narcissism has gained momentum over the past years. Narcissism emerges and develops from childhood onward. One main focus of research has centered around the question of how childhood socialization experiences contribute to the development of narcissism. Evidence accumulates that by overvaluing their children-seeing and treati...

Background: Several studies have investigated relationships between narcissism, self-esteem and behavioral problems in children. Most of these studies have been conducted in community samples, rather than in clinical referred samples. This field of research is clinically important, because data on community samples suggest that narcissism is a sig...

Two studies investigated whether parent–child discussion of peer provocations reduces young children's hostile attributional bias. Study 1 (N = 109, age 4–7)—an observational study—showed that parent–child discussion of nonhostile attributions (when reading a picture book) predicted reductions in children's hostile attributional bias from pre‐ to p...

We outline a program of research in which we examined state authenticity, the sense of being one’s true self. In particular, we describe its phenomenology (what it feels like to be experience authenticity), its correlates (e.g., emotions, needs), its nomological network (e.g., real-ideal self overlap, public and private self-consciousness), its cul...

Conditional regard refers to regard dependent upon the receiver's fulfillment of certain expectations. Using an experimental design, we examined the effect of conditional negative and positive regard on well-being and eagerness to learn in university freshmen (N = 131). Participants experienced either failure or success followed by conditional vs....

The young field of research on dark personality traits (i.e., socially aversive traits such as psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism) is gaining momentum. This Special Section examines the nature, origins, development, and sequelae of dark traits, underscoring their largely unappreciated relevance to abnormal psychology. The articles in thi...

Abstract Aim Shame and pride have important implications in educational contexts for pupils and educators alike. The aim of this study was to investigate whether adolescents’ growth (intelligence) mindset is associated with reduced shame experiences and increased pride experiences, within a secondary school context. We tested perceived academic c...

As they grow up, children construct views of themselves and their place in the world, known as their self-concept. This topic has often been addressed by social psychologists (studying how the self-concept is influenced by social contexts) and developmental psychologists (studying how the self-concept changes over time). Yet, relatively little is k...

This research aimed to examine whether and why children hold favorable self-conceptions (total N = 882 Dutch children, ages 8-12). Surveys (Studies 1-2) showed that children report strongly favorable self-conceptions. For example, when describing themselves on an open-ended measure, children mainly provided positive self-conceptions-about four time...

Western parents often give children overly positive, inflated praise. One perspective holds that inflated praise sets unattainable standards for children, eventually lowering children's self-esteem (self-deflation hypothesis). Another perspective holds that children internalize inflated praise to form narcissistic self-views (self-inflation hypothe...

Psychologists claim that narcissists have inflated, exaggerated, or excessive self-esteem. Media reports state that narcissists suffer from self-esteem on steroids. The conclusion seems obvious: Narcissists have too much self-esteem. A growing body of research shows, however, that narcissism and self-esteem are only weakly related. What, then, sepa...

IN PRESS: State authenticity is the sense that one is currently in alignment with one’s true or real self. We discuss state authenticity as seen by independent raters, describe its phenomenology, outline its triggers, consider its well-being and behavioral implications, and sketch out a cross-disciplinary research agenda.

Two studies investigated whether young children's hostile attributional bias (i.e., the tendency to assume that others have hostile intentions) may be explained by a lack of intent attribution skills (i.e., the ability to correctly infer others' intentions). We also investigated whether these intent attribution skills depend on children's false‐bel...

There is a need to identify the “effective ingredients” of evidence-based behavior therapies. We tested the effects of one of the most common ingredients in parenting interventions for preventing disruptive child behavior, referred to as labeled praise (e.g., “well done picking up your toys”), which is typically recommended in preference to unlabel...

Adolescents have a strong desire to “be themselves.” How does experiencing authenticity—the sense of being one’s true self—influence subjective well-being? What allows adolescents to experience authenticity? This research tests a working model of how authenticity is implicated in adolescents’ well-being. Using survey, diary, and experimental method...

The young field of research on youth narcissism has begun to bloom. Narcissism is a personality type marked by a sense of grandiosity and a strong need to get attention and admiration from others. Youth narcissism typically emerges at some point in late childhood or adolescence as a derailment of normal self-development and may yield considerable i...

Narcissism is a personality trait characterized by a sense of superiority and a desire for respect and admiration from others. A common belief, both in psychology and in popular culture, is that narcissism represents a form of excessive self-esteem. Psychologists, including ourselves, have labeled narcissism as “an exaggerated form of high self-est...

When children experience habitual peer difficulties, adults often remind them that many people care about them. How do such reminders of support impact children's emotional responses to acute experiences of peer disapproval? Intuitively, support reminders would exert compensatory effects attenuating the emotional impact of acute disapproval. Theory...

The purpose of this research is to test how adolescent girls’ narcissistic traits—characterized by a need to impress others and avoid ego-threat—influence acute adverse effects of thin-ideal exposure. Participants (11–15 years; total N?=?366; all female) reported their narcissistic traits. Next, in two experiments, they viewed images of either very...

The purpose of this research is to test how adolescent girls' narcissistic traits-characterized by a need to impress others and avoid ego-threat-influence acute adverse effects of thin-ideal exposure. Participants (11-15 years; total N = 366; all female) reported their narcissistic traits. Next, in two experiments, they viewed images of either very...

We thank Kealy et al. (1) for noting that our article on the origins of narcissism (2) “is a notable contribution to the empirical literature” and “has important implications for helping parents foster appropriate and realistic self-views in their children.” However, they raise questions regarding the interpretation of our findings.

A novel approach is needed to promote the efficacy of parenting interventions designed to improve children's mental health. The proposed approach bridges developmental and intervention science to test which intervention elements contribute to parenting intervention program efficacy. The approach encourages the field to move “back to the future” usi...

A few previous studies have shown that narcissistic traits in youth are positively associated with bullying. However, research examining the developmental relationship between narcissism and bullying is lacking. Moreover, it is unclear whether narcissists constitute a homogeneous group and whether the bullying of narcissistic youth results in estab...

Although it is natural for parents to value their children, some parents "overvalue" them, believing that their own children are more special and more entitled than other children are. This research introduces this concept of parental overvaluation. We developed a concise self-report scale to measure individual differences in parental overvaluation...

Background: Unconditional regard refers to the feeling that one is accepted and valued by others without conditions. Psychological theory suggests that experiences of unconditional regard lead children to feel that they are valuable despite setbacks. We hypothesized that reflecting on experiences of unconditional regard would buffer children's neg...

Receiving report card grades is psychologically salient to most students and can elicit a range of affective reactions. A 3-wave longitudinal study examined how grades shape students' (N = 375; M age at Wave 1 = 12.6 years) school engagement through the affective reactions they elicit. Emotional and behavioral engagement were measured at the start...

Calls are rising in intervention research to identify the effective components of interventions (e.g., Piquero et al., 2009). This knowledge should enable the improvement of interventions’ (cost-)effectiveness and the tailoring of interventions to individual families’ needs. Microtrials are a promising approach to stringently test which elements of...

Health care and vocational professionals regularly encounter patients with rheumatic diseases who are embittered after a disability pension examination. People who are embittered typically feel victimised, experience resentment and injustice, resist help, and have difficulty coping. Our objective was to examine the occurrence of embitterment in pat...

The transition from primary to secondary school challenges children's psychological well-being. A cross-transitional longitudinal study (N = 306; mean age = 12.2 years) examined why some children's self-esteem decreases across the transition whereas other children's self-esteem does not. Children's expected social acceptance in secondary school was...

Personality research has mainly relied on self-report measures, more than on behavioral assessments. In the present study, brief behavioral personality tests were developed to measure behavior that is prototypical for the Big Five traits of conscientiousness and agreeableness. A longitudinal study (N = 322; mean age = 12.2 years) examined the predi...

In the past decades, tremendous advances have been made in our understanding of peer relations. A description is emerging of how peer relations develop. Surprisingly, though, we know less about why peer relations develop as they do. Experimental designs provide opportunities to learn about causal processes in peer relations, yet they have not been...

From the early days of psychology, theorists have observed that parents sometimes transfer their own unfulfilled ambitions onto their child. We propose that parents are especially inclined to do so when they see their child as part of themselves, more so than as a separate individual. When parents see their child as part of themselves, their child'...

Additional information on the validity of the transferred ambitions measure. (DOC)

Not all positive self-views are alike. Developmental researchers increasingly recognize that it is important to distinguish between accurate, well-balanced positive self-views and inflated, narcissistic positive self-views. Narcissism refers to a sense of grandiosity and a strong need to be seen and admired by others. This article reviews current e...

Child-rearing experts have long believed that praise is an effective means to help children with low self-esteem feel better about themselves. But should one praise these children for who they are, or for how they behave? Study 1 (N = 357) showed that adults are inclined to give children with low self-esteem more person praise (i.e., praise for per...

People often displace their anger and aggression against innocent targets, sometimes called scapegoats. Tragic historic events suggest that members of ethnic minority out-groups may be especially likely to be innocent targets. The current experiment examined displaced aggression of Dutch youths against Dutch in-group peers versus Moroccan out-group...

People often displace their aggression against innocent targets. Notwithstanding the merits of previous research on displaced aggression, critical gaps remain. First, it is unclear whether and how situational and dispositional factors interact to influence displaced aggression. Moreover, it is unclear whether engaging in direct aggression increases...

Is prosocial behavior a prerequisite for having good-quality friendships? This study (N = 477, mean age = 12.2 years) examined whether the link between children's prosocial tendencies and their perceived friendship quality was dependent on children's level of popularity in the peer group. Children's prosocial tendencies were assessed both as observ...

For many years, the prevailing view held that aggression and violence stem from low self-esteem. Despite this apparent consensus, neither a compelling theoretical rationale nor a persuasive body of empirical evidence existed to support this view. The current empirical evidence shows that aggressive and violent individuals often have inflated, narci...