My personal usage and understanding is quite close to the dictionary definition (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/narcissism): inordinate fascination with oneself; excessive self-love; vanity. Those are not positive traits, which goes back to my original point: if you use the term not intending to imply something negative about the person, you're likely to confuse others. That confusion is why this subthread exists.
@mjburgess was using it to refer to negative attributes, and so was I. You stretched the idea into something it's not by saying it has to be "pathological", and that it has to negatively impact others, and you claimed that unless people adhered to those criteria, the term wouldn't be understood. Neither of those claims of yours is supported by the definition you just provided, nor have you demonstrated that "most people" agree. Narcissism can be a negative attribute about someone without being pathological and without affecting other people in a material way. Being narcissistic is judged as a negative attribute to have by the dictionary.com definition with the purely subjective words "inordinate" and "excessive", but it doesn't otherwise agree with what you said above.
I am unaware of any colloquial use of "narcissism" that would include going to grad school to learn more about a subject. Poster steev was also confused by this usage. You are correct, I have provided no evidence our confusion will be universal, but: don't be surprised if it is.
I don't speak for mjburgess, is that really an entirely fair or good faith summary of what @mjburgess said? Is it the strongest plausible interpretation of the comments above? If it was said that learning alone is narcissistic, then I agree with you, that'd be confusing. I don't quite see that anywhere above, but maybe that's what was meant.
Don't you think that researchers sand-bagging paper reviews with requests for citations of their own work is a tad narcissistic? That behavior is rampant in academics, among many other behaviors seeking public name recognition. I don't fully agree with the views above, and they seem to have a pessimistic flavor, but I don't see the word narcissism being misused according to the dictionary definition you provided.
Anyway, I don't really care what the definition of the word is, it just seemed like you had an extreme version in the opposite direction that is at least as prone to confusion. It doesn't exactly help prove the point if your version has the same defect, or if weasel words are used to back-up the claim, right?
> I think the motivation "to be a better researcher" is quite narcissistic (in a mild sense) in the first place.
This claim is independent of the negative behaviors; it's intended as independent support by claiming that the desire to be a better researcher is inherently narcissistic, without regard to the negative behaviors. As to my personal definition being extreme: well, yeah. I've never heard someone use it to mean anything remotely positive. The justification for using it that context was, to me, non-sensical. But I am a descriptivist; words mean how people use them. So I won't call it wrong. Just: don't be surprised if people are confused.
