Conversational Narcissism
It is commonplace within American culture, especially among the male sex, to tend to dominate the conversation and shift the attention toward oneself, diverting it from someone else. This monopoly of conversation is called Conversational Narcissism. This can be considered a face saving practice in which one can disguise their disinterest in another's conversation by casually yet blatantly shifting the attention from one to the other.This happens in casual conversations so often that it usually goes undetected, and most people either don't notice, or don't even know that they are doing it. At one point or another, almost everybody has most likely done this.
Derber breaks down this practice into two categories, active and passive practices.In an active practice, a person will be speaking, and another person might say something completely different, or refer to how they feel about the topic in the first person, whether they were asked for their opinion or not. In order to determine if someone is being a conversational narcissist, a response can be defined as either a support response, or a shift response.
A support response basically reflects interest in the connversation in is generally considerate of the other speaker. Recently, when I was talking to my friend Tim, he said, "I heard this awesome band, they're called Three Inches of Blood." In response, I said, "Really? What do they sound like?" This is considered to be more of an acceptable response. To illustrate the point, if Tim had asked me the question, and I had responded, "I hate heavy metal," that would most likely kill the conversation. This is basically the most flagrant way of asserting oneself in a conversation.
Derber explains that people will try to be slick about the way they use shift responses, and attempt to cover it up with either a transition, or feigning interest before making the shift. A conversation between two friends about movies might best represent this. Assume someone says to a friend, "I really want to see that movie, Team America," and the friend gives the support response, "Oh yeah?" The person may then continue and say "Did you hear about that movie? I heard it's wicked funny," before the friend says, "I've already seen it, it sucked." The "Oh yeah" in this conversation occured to cover up the friend's lack of interest in the topic. An alternate shift response would be for the friend to change the topic and say, "I think movies are too expensive nowadays."
When using shift responses, sometimes a person may instigate the conversation and set it up just so they can express something. An interesting example of people who frequently do this are talk show hosts who conduct celebrity interviews on a regular basis. One example might be Conan O'Brien interviewing Hammer (formerly MC Hammer). He might say something like, "So, I saw your video, I see you've still got some dance moves." Hammer would reply, "Yeah, I learned this whole routine for this song on my new album." Conan might then take the conversation back and say, "You know, I've been told I've got some pretty good dance moves myself," and then he'd get up and most likely start dancing.
All of the above are active methods of using the shift response. The other method is to give a passive shift response. This method is probably even more common than the above, and it is basically a dismissal of the other person's thoughts or ideas. Oneexample might be if at Thanksgiving, a relative were to look around awkwardly, and upon seeing no else to talk to, they turn to me and say, "So, Mark, still going to college?" I will reply and say, "Yeah, this is my senior year." They will attempt to continue the conversation and say, "So what are you studying up there again?" and I would tell them Graphic Design. This is about when they get bored and tell me something like, "Wow... yeah," and then walk away. This is a common example of a passive shift response. Another might be a woman getting home from work and saying to her husband, "My day at work sucked. I had the worst customer," only to have the husband reply, "Uh-huh," and not inquire further into what was troubling his wife.
Conversational Narcissism is all too common among the American populace, and all one can really do is try to be cogniscient of when it is occuring. After acknowleging these facts, and noticing these trends in behavior, one can begin to better their own speech and communication habits, as well as recognize when people are secretly not interested in what someone is saying or if they are too full of themselves to be able to have a decent conversation.