Unlocking the psychology of millennials, with Jean Twenge, PhD (2024)

Audrey Hamilton: What do millennials want? Independence, work-life balance, recognition? When studying the latest generation to enter adulthood, psychology professor and author Jean Twenge came across some surprising findings. Iin this episode, she talks about how and why millennials are changing the meaning of individualism in today’s society. I’m Audrey Hamilton and this is “Speaking of Psychology.”

Jean Twenge is a professor of psychology at San Diego State University and the author of the best-selling books “Generation Me” and the “Narcissism Epidemic.” As a consultant, she advises companies and organizations on the differences between generations – the boomers, gen Xers and millennials. Welcome Dr. Twenge.

Jean Twenge: Thank you.

Audrey Hamilton: Millennials, what makes them different from previous generations? What makes them similar?

Jean Twenge: So, let’s talk about some of the differences first. So, millennials tend to have very positive views of themselves and are very optimistic about their expectations for their lives and they’re more likely to say that they’re above average compared to their peers and they tend to score higher on other measures of positive self-views, like self-esteem and even narcissism.

At the same time, they are more tolerant and less prejudicial than previous generations. So, they support same-sex marriage at a much higher rate than other generations. For example, with some things that we’re doing right now, they have a much more egalitarian view of gender roles compared to what say boomers did when they were young back in the 1960s and ‘70s.

And of course not everything is going to change over the generations. Millennials are just as likely as previous generations, for example, to want to get married and have a family. They’re similar in a lot of their goals and values.

But, there’s also some fairly distinct differences in the way they see the world and they tend to, as a very general rule, be more focused on themselves and less focused on things outside themselves compared to the way boomers and gen Xers were at the same age.

Audrey Hamilton: As you said, they do tend to view themselves positively. Can you explain a little bit more about this finding? Is it related to upbringing? Is it society in general? Where is that coming from?

Jean Twenge: So, the positive self-views more than likely are rooted in the cultural movement toward more individualism. So in cross-cultural psychology, people talk about countries like the U.S. being very high in individualism, more focused on the self and less on social roles in the society compared to a culture like Japan, which is less self-focused and has more rigid social rules and more focus on others, basically. So, what I’m trying to look at as the big picture is how has the culture of the U.S. changed over time.

And the theme that really comes up over and over is that individualism has increased. And it’s not just this generation. It shows up in across people of all ages. It shows up in our language use. So, one of my favorite recent studies – we look at the Google Books database over time and found that the use of “I,” “me” and “mine” increased while the use of “we” and “us” went down. But the biggest change was in “you.” The use of “you” actually quadrupled and all of the second person pronouns. So, you think about that in a book. If you’re reading a book and it says “you” it’s much more individualized. It’s the author having a conversation with the reader. And it echoes some of the self-help language of your best life. So, this is a trend that really goes beyond just the millennials. They reflect this trend so much because this is the only world they’ve ever known. That’s why I call them “generation me” because they have never known a world that put duty before self.

Audrey Hamilton: As you mentioned, this also plays into the idea that more recent generations are more tolerant of others. Is it more because they just realized that every person is an individual and they’re able to recognize that? I’m curious in what your research has shown.

Jean Twenge: Yeah, that’s exactly right. At this point, that connection is a little bit more theoretical than some of these other findings. In general, if you look cross-culturally, individualistic cultures do tend to be more tolerant. But there’s not as much work on that as you’d expect. That’s something that’s kind of an area for future research.

But in terms of the trends over time, it’s very clear that there’s much more gender equality, racial equality, equality based on sexual orientation. All of these things have increased in our culture in the last 50 years or so. Just enormous amounts of change, things that used to be taken for granted as social rules are no longer and many of those changes are really beneficial in that they’re treating people as individuals rather than members of groups. That you can see someone for who they are rather than saying, “well you’re a woman so you need to do this” or, “you’re gay so you can’t get married.” Those attitudes are not as accepted anymore. And that’s one of the most positive things about this cultural shift toward more individualism.

Audrey Hamilton: I’m curious – and I don’t know how far back your research goes as far as generations – but it seems like things are moving faster and that social change is moving faster – comparatively – I’m talking about hundreds of years. Are we looking at in the last 50 years or so a more dramatic shift or is it changing slowly, more steadily over time?

Jean Twenge: I think it depends on the particular trait or attitude. It varies so I think for individualism there’s been a lot of other authors who have made this case, too, about individualism increasing and at least one says that individualism has probably been increasing in western nations since the Renaissance. But he argues that that really took off, really accelerated beginning in the 1970s and that’s certainly what the data seems to look at too. Like some of those Google Book studies, that’s when a lot of these changes really took place.

But it really does vary. A lot of the generational changes in terms of these positive self-views, they happened in the 1970s and 1980s and then have levelled off. Same thing for some of the increases in anxiety and depression. But then, there’s other areas. Say, equal rights for gays and lesbians or equal rights for women where there was a lot of change in the ‘70s. And then again, there was kind of a plateau in the ‘80s and ‘90s and then just since 2000 there’s been more change.

So there’s some interesting patterns. It’s not always completely in one direction. There’s times when there’s lulls in the progress or lulls in the trend. But, we’re definitely living in a time now shaped by technology and these things which may be accelerating cultural change. I think that’s another great area for future research, too, is to find out which eras have the most change. Have things really accelerated?

Audrey Hamilton: Why is it important for companies and organizations to understand the characteristics or the personalities of their employees and the generational differences that come into play in the workplace?

Jean Twenge: It’s really crucial to have a view of which differences among those young workers that you’re seeing – which of those are really due to generation and which of those are due to age. Because you can look at those young workers and you can think, “man, I never did that. I never showed up late for work.” But really? Really, is that really true? I’m sure you probably did, and you probably have this rosy view of the past.

So what we really need is to try to find data that compares these young workers now to what young workers used to be like, say, in the 1990s or in the 1970s. That will show us that there are really generational or time period differences, or whether it’s due to just being young or due to your memory being faulty or some other thing.

So, some business school colleagues and I started looking at this recently and we were able to find that over time data set going back to the ‘70s that asks a bunch of great questions about what people want out of a job, how central they think work is to their lives. All of those things that managers really want to know about this young generation and what motivates them. We were able to look at that in really great depth and take age out of the equation because everybody was the same age in this sample. They were all about 18 years old, so either entering their careers or going to do so in a few years after college.

And the biggest difference that we found was in work-life balance or in leisure values – that gen X and especially the millennials were much more likely to say they wanted a job with more vacation – that was more flexible. They thought that work was going to be a less central part of their lives. This all suggests as just one thing that managers really need to understand that this generation that they’re seeing in the workplace, that yeah, they’ll do good work for you but they really, really crave that flexibility and they want to be able to have work-life balance and be able to have their life outside of work as well.

And that was a reasonably big difference. That was more than half the standard deviation because there’s been some skeptics who have said, “oh you know, yes there are some differences but really they’re pretty small.” Well, that half of standard deviation, that’s enough for twice as many to say that having a lot of vacation was really important. So that difference at the average multiplies into really, really big differences when you look at the top and the bottom of the distribution.

So, point being, yeah, it is absolutely true there’s overlap between the generations. It’s not that millennials are way over here on this side and boomers are way over on the other. But, there are differences that do really shape recruiting and retaining and managing this generation that weren’t around 20 years ago or 40 years ago.

Audrey Hamilton: Okay, well great. Thank you Dr. Twenge. I really appreciate you taking the time to speak with us.

Jean Twenge: You’re welcome. It was fun.

Audrey Hamilton: For more information on Twenge’s research and to hear more episodes, go to ourwebsite. With the American Psychological Association’s “Speaking of Psychology,” I’m Audrey Hamilton.