Trying to pin down the character of a generation is a controversial and, some say, presumptuous exercise. Who’s to say whether 50 million Americans should be called the Me Generation, or the Greatest? Who’s to decide exactly when Gen X ends and Gen Y begins?
Never let it be said that psychological researchers duck a challenge. In recent years some have sketched a portrait of the current crop of twenty- and thirty-somethings that is low on greatness and high on traits like entitlement and narcissism. The Millennials, also known as Generation Y, may be a little callous, too: At a psychology conference in May, researchers presented data suggesting that college students today had significantly less “empathetic concern” than students of the 1980s.
Social scientists have been surveying young people for decades, looking for trends in thinking and behavior that might be attributable to shifts in the broader culture. Tracking behaviors and attitudes is relatively straightforward. Compared with previous generations, for instance, the Millennials are more tolerant of people of other races and different sexual orientations, research suggests. They appear to be more likely than previous generations to do volunteer work. Hundreds of thousands of them have signed on to serve in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But assessing their motives, their traits — their collective personality — is a far more slippery territory. Thus the debate over the Generation Y character, and whether generations even have distinct characters.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/03/health/03mind.html?th&emc=th
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