Today's Struggles of the Mind Through Research: Peter Pan Syndrome, the Smile Mask, Digital Narcissism, Fatalism, Putting Yourself Last and Addiction

This article is general information to aid understanding. If depression or addiction is breaking down your daily life, please get professional help. Contact your local emergency number or a mental health or addiction helpline (in the US, call or text 988, or call the SAMHSA helpline at 1-800-662-4357).

The research behind the buzzwords

Phrases like “Peter Pan syndrome” and “smile mask syndrome” make states of mind easy to picture. But most of them are not formal diagnoses. Here we reread six of these expressions, one by one, through the research behind them.

Peter Pan syndrome: maybe adulthood simply arrives later

“Peter Pan syndrome” is a term the psychologist Kiley (1983) used in a popular book to describe men who avoid responsibility and refuse to grow up. It has no diagnostic criteria.

The developmental psychologist Arnett (2000) offered another perspective. In industrialised societies, as education lengthens and work and marriage come later, the years from roughly 18 to 29 have become a distinct stage called “emerging adulthood” — a time of identity exploration, instability and open possibilities. So taking on adult roles later is not necessarily a sign of individual immaturity. Still, if you keep avoiding responsibility and relationships or work repeatedly fall apart, that pattern is worth looking into.

The smile mask: when feelings are pushed down behind a smile

“Smile mask syndrome” is a name given in the 1990s by the Japanese psychiatrist Makoto Natsume to people who must always smile and are quietly wearing out inside.

In research terms, this is close to emotional labour and emotional suppression.

• The sociologist Hochschild (1983) called flight attendants’ managing of their smiles as part of the job emotional labour.
• A meta-analysis of three decades of research found that surface acting — putting on emotions you don’t feel — is clearly linked to emotional exhaustion (Hülsheger & Schewe, 2011).
• People who habitually suppress emotions tended to feel fewer positive emotions and to be less satisfied with their relationships (Gross & John, 2003).

If you are so drained that words fail you when you get home, it matters to secure time and people with whom you don’t have to put on a face. You can look at your current load with OIYO’s emotional labour test.

Digital narcissism: do selfies breed self-love?

Twenge et al. (2008) reported that American college students’ narcissism scores rose from one generation to the next, warning of a “narcissism epidemic.” Later research analysing larger datasets, however, found that narcissism actually declined slightly between the 1990s and the 2010s (Wetzel et al., 2017).

Some studies find a weak link between posting many selfies and narcissism scores (Sorokowski et al., 2015), but there is little causal evidence that selfies create narcissism. People post photos for many reasons: keeping records, connecting, having fun. If you’re curious about your own tendencies, see the narcissism test.

Fatalism: “nothing’s going to change anyway”

Rotter (1966) distinguished an internal locus of control, the belief that outcomes depend on your own actions, from an external locus of control, the belief that they depend on luck or others. Seligman’s research on learned helplessness showed that repeated uncontrollable experiences can make people stop trying at all, and later work revised the theory towards the idea that a sense of control can be learned and regained (Maier & Seligman, 2016).

Personality changes more than we think, too. A meta-analysis of longitudinal studies found that conscientiousness and emotional stability rise steadily on average from the twenties into middle age (Roberts, Walton & Viechtbauer, 2006). You can’t change the pages already written, but the unwritten pages are still there.

Putting yourself last: is looking after yourself selfish?

The habit of always caring for others first and leaving yourself for last is hard to sustain. Neff (2003) proposed self-compassion: treating yourself like a close friend when things are hard. A meta-analysis found that people with higher self-compassion have lower depression and anxiety (MacBeth & Gumley, 2012).

Self-compassion is not self-justification or laziness. It is closer to acknowledging mistakes without beating yourself up. Looking after yourself is, in the end, also a way of keeping the strength to help others for the long haul. You can check how you treat yourself with OIYO’s self-compassion test.

Addiction and “hungry ghosts”: a thirst that never ends

In Buddhism, hungry ghosts are beings with huge bellies and needle-thin throats who can never be satisfied however much they eat. In In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts (Maté, 2008), the physician Gabor Maté borrowed this image to urge us to understand addiction as an attempt to soothe pain.

There are several ways to explain addiction.

• The brain disease model: repeated use changes circuits for reward, motivation and self-control (Volkow, Koob & McLellan, 2016). It has critics, but the need to take brain changes into account is still seen as important (Heilig et al., 2021).
• The role of environment: in the “Rat Park” experiment by Alexander et al. (1981), rats in a spacious environment with companions drank less morphine water. Later replications, though, have been mixed.

Put together, addiction is a problem in which brain changes, pain and environment are intertwined. That’s why treatment often combines medication, counselling and rebuilding relationships. Rather than seeing it only as a lack of willpower, asking for help is the first step.

Summary at a glance

Expression	A diagnosis?	What research says
Peter Pan syndrome	No	A social shift that lengthened emerging adulthood
Smile mask	No	Surface acting and suppression are linked to exhaustion
Digital narcissism	No	A rise in narcissism has not been confirmed
Fatalism	No	A sense of control can be learned and regained
Putting yourself last	No	Self-compassion is inversely related to depression and anxiety
Addiction	Yes (substances, gambling, etc.)	Brain changes, pain and environment act together

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References

• Kiley, D. (1983). The Peter Pan Syndrome: Men Who Have Never Grown Up. Dodd, Mead.
• Arnett, J. J. (2000). Emerging adulthood: A theory of development from the late teens through the twenties. American Psychologist, 55(5), 469–480.
• Hochschild, A. R. (1983). The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. University of California Press.
• Hülsheger, U. R., & Schewe, A. F. (2011). On the costs and benefits of emotional labor: A meta-analysis of three decades of research. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 16(3), 361–389.
• Gross, J. J., & John, O. P. (2003). Individual differences in two emotion regulation processes: Implications for affect, relationships, and well-being. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85(2), 348–362.
• Twenge, J. M., et al. (2008). Egos inflating over time: A cross-temporal meta-analysis of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory. Journal of Personality, 76(4), 875–902.
• Wetzel, E., et al. (2017). The narcissism epidemic is dead; long live the narcissism epidemic. Psychological Science, 28(12), 1833–1847.
• Sorokowski, P., et al. (2015). Selfie posting behaviors are associated with narcissism among men. Personality and Individual Differences, 85, 123–127.
• Rotter, J. B. (1966). Generalized expectancies for internal versus external control of reinforcement. Psychological Monographs, 80(1), 1–28.
• Maier, S. F., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2016). Learned helplessness at fifty: Insights from neuroscience. Psychological Review, 123(4), 349–367.
• Roberts, B. W., Walton, K. E., & Viechtbauer, W. (2006). Patterns of mean-level change in personality traits across the life course. Psychological Bulletin, 132(1), 1–25.
• Neff, K. D. (2003). Self-compassion: An alternative conceptualization of a healthy attitude toward oneself. Self and Identity, 2(2), 85–101.
• MacBeth, A., & Gumley, A. (2012). Exploring compassion: A meta-analysis of the association between self-compassion and psychopathology. Clinical Psychology Review, 32(6), 545–552.
• Maté, G. (2008). In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction. Knopf Canada.
• Volkow, N. D., Koob, G. F., & McLellan, A. T. (2016). Neurobiologic advances from the brain disease model of addiction. New England Journal of Medicine, 374(4), 363–371.
• Heilig, M., et al. (2021). Addiction as a brain disease revised: Why it still matters, and the need for consilience. Neuropsychopharmacology, 46(10), 1715–1723.
• Alexander, B. K., Beyerstein, B. L., Hadaway, P. F., & Coambs, R. B. (1981). Effect of early and later colony housing on oral ingestion of morphine in rats. Pharmacology Biochemistry and Behavior, 15(4), 571–576.