When Jean Twenge first started dating her husband, she tested him for narcissism on their fourth date.

"He did great," she said. "He scored low, and the rest is history."

If Twenge had any excuse for making her future husband sweat through the 40 questions on the Narcissism Personality Inventory, it's that the test has provided the basis for her influential research on the trait (plus she'd recently broken up with a man who she said defined the word).

Twenge is now a professor of psychology at San Diego State University, and her research has focused on the idea that today's college students are more self-centered and materialistic than students were 25 years ago. Twenge will speak at the University of Alaska Anchorage Thursday night.

Do UAA students agree with Twenge's thesis?

Jennifer Husby, 23, who is in her fourth year at UAA, said she thinks students today are just much busier than when her father was in college. What might appear to be narcissism is really ambition and focus, she said.

"It's like I have so much going on that I don't have the time to focus on anything other than myself," Husby said.

Reached by phone in San Diego, where she was home taking care of her 6-month-old daughter, Twenge cited examples of the rising narcissistic tide ranging from recent song lyrics to people hiring paparazzi to follow them around. She even blames the trait for the current recession. Narcissists tend to be over-confident and take excessive risks because they think they lead charmed lives and are immune to harm, Twenge said.

"I think over-confidence is a pretty good word to describe what happened in the mortgage market," she said.

If you're interested, you can take the NPI yourself. (Tundra Telegraph's editor wound up with a humble 10, but this reporter scored a 22, well into narcissistic territory, which is a little embarrassing.)

Twenge said she mentions both Sarah Palin and Barack Obama in the forward to the 2009 book she co-authored, "The Narcissism Epidemic," which came out in paperback Tuesday. Twenge also wrote a book called "Generation Me" in 2006.

"If you do a Google search for ‘Sarah Palin' and ‘narcissism,' all these hits turn up. But the same thing happens when you search for Barack Obama," Twenge said. Her take is that the word is overused in politics and its usage in that arena doesn't have much to do with its actual meaning.

"Do these people have narcissistic tendencies?" Twenge said. "Yes. Are they full-on narcissists? Probably not."

Besides making for an unattractive personality, Twenge said, narcissism can be dangerous. Violent offenders in prison score high on the NPI, and studies show that people who score high on the test are also more aggressive towards their peers.

At UAA, Twenge will talk about "what each of us can do to stop the epidemic of narcissism." Twenge said she'd like to see parents teaching compassion and understanding, as opposed to the self-love and uniqueness that parents stress now.

As for Husby, the UAA student, she said her classmates are focused on their personal and financial success, and that they're already in the "keeping up with the Joneses phase."

"Everything can seem narcissistic to a point," Husby said, "because everything we do is to satisfy one of our own needs."

Jean Twenge will give a free lecture on Thursday, April 15, at 7:30 p.m. in UAA's Wendy Williamson Auditorium.

Contact Joshua Saul at jsaul(at)alaskadispatch.com.