Millennials get a pretty bad rap. We’re entitled, self-obsessed brats who won too many awards for showing up in school and grew up believing we were, indeed, the special snowflakes our helicopter parents always told us we were .

An oft-cited 2010 study published in Psychology Today seemed to cement our reputation as egomaniacs. Researchers found that 70% of college students were more narcissistic and less empathetic than the average student 30 years prior. The report, co-authored by San Diego State University researcher Jean Twenge, served as the basis of her controversial book “Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled — and More Miserable Than Ever Before.”

But Twenge’s study focused on the 27-year period between 1982 and 2009 —  notably cutting off just as the college class of 2009 happened to be entering one of the worst job markets in history.

In a new study published in Psychological Science, Emily Bianchi, an assistant professor at Emory University’s business school, found that these recession-era graduates are actually better off in some ways than their peers, despite coming of age in a gloomy economy.

Bianchi argues that millennials who graduated during the recession are actually less narcissistic than those who grew up during boom times. Recessions, she says, actually have a way of moderating the growth of narcissism over time.

“Recessions can be humbling and can maybe temper people’s expectations of what they deserve and what they can expect,” Bianchi told Yahoo Finance. “I’m not trying to say the recession was a good thing. I’m just saying there may be some silver linings.”

To see what impact the economy could have on young adults’ levels of narcissism, Bianchi gave more than 1,500 adults born between 1947 and 1994 a survey to test their tendency toward narcissism — the same 40-question Narcissism Personality Inventory quiz that researchers have been using in narcissism studies since the 1970s. Clinical narcissism is defined as someone who lacks empathy for others, needs admiration from others, and is considered to be cocky, self-centered, manipulative and demanding.

Bianchi looked at the connection between the participants’ levels of narcissism and the rates of unemployment during the formative years of young adulthood (ages 18-25). Since younger people who just beginning their careers are disproportionately impacted by economic downturns, it made sense to study that age range.

Bianchi found that people who entered adulthood during the worst economic climate (7.7% unemployment) scored on average 2.4 points lower on the 0-40 narcissism scale than those who came of age during the best economic climate (4.3% unemployment).