Early Career Impact Awardee – Society for Research in Child Development
Dr. Brummelman is a leading developmental psychologist studying the developing self. He earned his PhD in Developmental Psychology at Utrecht University in 2015. He is currently an associate professor at the University of Amsterdam, where he is also the principal investigator of the lab KiDLAB which studies the origins, nature, and consequences of children’s self-views.
One of his lines of research has transformed our understanding of childhood narcissism. Challenging the traditional belief that narcissism does not exist in children, Dr. Brummelman’s work shows that narcissism develops in childhood. With the sense of individualism on the rise since the 1960s, Western parents have become increasingly concerned with raising children’s self-esteem. Through observations of parent-child interactions, Dr. Brummelman discovered that parents often attempt to raise self-esteem by telling children how unique and extraordinary they are. While well-intentioned, these practices backfire. Through experimental and longitudinal studies, Dr. Brummelman discovered that lavishing children with praise lowers self-esteem and may even raise narcissism. His work also demonstrates the harmful long-term consequences of narcissism (e.g., narcissistic children may become aggressive leaders). His work has informed popular parenting books (e.g., How to Raise Kids Who Aren’t Assholes) and parenting interventions.
Another of his research lines illuminates the crucial role of self-views in achievement inequality. Globally, children from low socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds perform worse in school than high-SES peers, even when their ability is the same. Through experimental and large-scale cross-cultural studies, Dr. Brummelman has revealed that children from low-SES backgrounds develop more negative self-views where they perceive themselves as less intelligent, less able to grow their intelligence, less deserving, and less worthy. Dr. Brummelman discovered that these self-views emerge because children from low-SES backgrounds are exposed to denigrating messages about their intellectual ability (e.g., excessive praise for minor achievements). Their negative self-views, in turn, undermine academic achievement, reinforcing achievement inequality. These findings inform educational policy and practice.
Dr. Brummelman has also made distinguished theoretical contributions. Integrating his empirical findings, he has developed theoretical models addressing core questions about the developing self: How do self-views develop? How are self-views shaped by socialization at home and in the classroom? And how do self-views perpetuate achievement inequality? These models inform research, policy, and practice (e.g., interventions to cut achievement inequality). Such empirical and theoretical findings have been published in a variety of leading journals.
Dr. Brummelman has made distinguished contributions to the dissemination of developmental science. He makes his science accessible to the general public by writing for popular science magazines, such as Scientific American, Psychology Today, Psyche Magazine, and Behavioral Scientist. He also wrote a popular science book on narcissism (“Admire Me!”) for parents, teachers, and clinicians, which has been nominated as the best Dutch popular science book of 2019. He regularly gives talks to parents, teachers, clinicians, and policy makers about the real-life implications of his work. He does interviews for TV channels, podcasts, magazines, and newspapers, including the New Yorker, CNN, and BBC. In doing so, he has initiated a global debate on how secular, individualistic trends have pervaded the way we raise our children.
As a first-generation university student, Dr. Brummelman is committed to reducing inequality in education. He leads Lil’Scientist—a citizen science project that engages children from disadvantaged backgrounds as scientists. This project reaches over 3,300 children across 63 locations throughout the Netherlands. He also collaborates with non-academic organizations to investigate and address inequality in marginalized communities around the world (e.g., The Trust for Social Achievement in Bulgaria, OvidiuRo in Romania, and Schools2030 in Kyrgyzstan). Also, he is the chair of The Young Academy (De Jonge Akademie) of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, where he aims to contribute to equality of opportunity in Dutch academia.
