Narcissistic individuals use social media to promote themselves. But how do they feel about fellow narcissists who do the same?
A new study published in the scientific journal Computers in Human Behavior used Instagram to examine whether narcissists are more tolerant of the narcissistic behavior of others.
“Posting selfies is a popular activity that exemplifies narcissistic self-promotion on Instagram,” explained study author Seunga Venus Jin of Sejong University. “Narcissism is a positive indicator of willingness to take selfies and frequency of posting selfies. Why do people not only post selfies but also ‘like’ and ‘follow’ others who post selfies?”
The two-part study of 276 adults recruited from Amazon’s MTurk found that Instagram users who post selfies and groupies were perceived as more narcissistic.
But narcissistic participants showed a more favorable attitude toward selfies posted by other people. They also showed a greater intention to follow fellow narcissists on Instagram and a higher intention to post their own selfies.
“Selfies and groupies are interpreted as more negatively narcissistic than photos taken by others and neutral photos,” Venus told PsyPost. “However, narcissistic personality similarity between the selfie poster and viewer mediates this effect. Furthermore, post source’s popularity and viewers’ need for popularity interact to moderate the causal effect of post types on perceived narcissism.”
“This study only focused on ‘grandiose narcissism’ while not examining ‘vulnerable narcissism’,” Venus said.
Vulnerable narcissism is associated with insecurity and social withdrawal, while grandiose narcissism is linked to extraversion and an excessive admiration of one’s own physical attractiveness.
“In addition, replicating grandiose/vulnerable narcissism experiments with a variety of social media platforms like Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Tumblr, and Snapchat will increase generalizability,” Venus added.
“This study discovered the effects of narcissism and popularity on a wide range of psychological and behavioral outcomes. This study offers the basis for future explanations of selfies and narcissism, by adding empirical evidence to the narcissism tolerance hypothesis.”
The study, “Narcissism 2.0! Would Narcissists Follow Fellow Narcissists on Instagram?“, was co-authored by Aziz Muqaddam.
NATESOR on January 8th, 2018 at 06:12 UTC »
Maybe I'm just ignorant, but I feel like they are misusing the term narcissist here. "Perceived narcissism" as opposed to clinical narcissism? It seems to me they are conflating the two. From the sounds of it, they made no attempt to correlate selfies with any of the other symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder. Just sort of let it go as obvious...? Doesn't seem like sound science to me.
Also, reddit sure does seem to love any chance to selfie shame people...
Diadochii on January 8th, 2018 at 05:58 UTC »
Removing the narcissism aspect of this, can this not also be viewed as people with a certain personality trait liking or following others of similar behavior.
If a person enjoys taking selfies, isn't it just likely they will be drawn to people who enjoy the same activity in the same way someone who may post about a sports team will end up liking fellow sports fans.
In what way does focusing on narcissistic personalities matter in this?
rustylantern on January 8th, 2018 at 05:24 UTC »
Very interesting - the whole article/topic, that is.
Going in a different direction, I'm very interested in other potential motivators for the selfie phenomenon and creation of an entirely online persona in general, e.g., its normalization within culture. In other words, it has become such a "normal" and essentially expected part of modern communication and construction of an individual's virtual personal that I feel that there is a lot of pressure to take selfies, construct said online persona and live through it to satisfy social networks, family/friend groups, etc.