I am always looking for data on cultural changes related to narcissism. Not narcissism, per se, but cultural trends related to materialism, vanity, empathy, etc. The ideal data sets are cross-temporal (are sampled across time), done by people not interested in the issue of narcissism, and odd (i.e., things I never would have thought of). This counts on all fronts. Researchers at Ohio State University assessed obituary photos and found that the photos are taken from increasingly younger times in the deceaseds’ lives.
The study found that the number of obituary photographs showing the deceased at a much younger age than when he or she died more than doubled between 1967 and 1997. . . . And women were more than twice as likely as men to have an obituary photo from when they were much younger. . . . In 1967, about 17 percent of the obituary photographs surveyed in the The Plain Dealer (a daily newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio) were “age-inappropriate” – meaning they showed the deceased at least 15 years younger than when they died. By 1997, the number had increased to 36 percent of the surveyed obit photos.
Also, these data are interesting because the photos are typically picked by family:
Anderson said it is likely that either spouses or adult children of the deceased chose the photographs that accompanied the obituaries. . . They understandably wanted to choose a photo that they thought represented their spouse or parent at his or her peak, he said. But what is remarkable is how we as a society define these peak years, and how that definition has changed over time.
Nice study.
