The study at Ohio State University confirms that men who post selfies online are more likely to exhibit psychopathic and narcissistic tendencies than the ones who do not.
Jesse Fox, who is the lead author of the study and assistant professor of communication at The Ohio State University, says that men who are more likely to edit selfies prior to uploading on social media site score even higher in narcissism and self-objectification compared to the guys who just post selfies without editing and they just happen to be above average psychopathy.
“It’s not surprising that men who post a lot of selfies and spend more time editing them are more narcissistic, but this is the first time it has actually been confirmed in a study,” said Fox.
“The more interesting finding is that they also score higher on this other anti-social personality trait, psychopathy, and are more prone to self-objectification.”
The study surveyed 800 men between the ages of 18 to 40 with their social media habit and the result was published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences. The study did not include women because the document which Fox received from a magazine did not have comparable data for women, however she believes the same finding could apply to women as well.
Well, the result of the study doesn’t mean that men who post a lot of selfies are necessarily narcissists or psychopaths, however they show higher than average levels of those anti-social traits.
Narcissism means self-proclaiming that you are smarter, better and more attractive than others, but with some underlying insecurities, but do keep in mind that there is a bright side of being a narcissist because they tend to succeed more in job interview. Psychopathy involves a lack of empathy towards others and a tendency toward impulsive behavior.
Fox says there is a self-reinforcing cycle when it comes to self-objectification, because these people tend to post more selfies, which leads to more feedback from friends and this makes them to post even more.
“It may make people objectify themselves even more,” she said. “We are running a study on that now.” [Ohio State University]
Hopefully the subjects gave honest answers. Interesting study.
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Posting selfies is an absurd thing to do online; posting pictures online of oneself, children family, etc., is a stupid thing to do because it can and and very often does get stalkers harrrasing a person and/or thier family, …it’s dangerous and I don’t know why anybody does it …I guess they do it because it’s become so commonplace but it’s also become commonplace that people get stalked.
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Yes, it could be really dangerous and I guess everybody needs to be careful. No matter how common, being stalked is never fun.
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I agree, interesting share, theres this thing called “groufie” – a group selfie, being publicized in our country, the Philippines. Theyre trying to eliminate anti-socialism through selfies with your group of friends. Im a bit happy that theyre doing it tho im not an avid fan of selfies or any of such kind. What are your thoughts about it guys?
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Interesting, never knew about that and I like the sound of that. I think it could be quite helpful doing it against anti-socialism.
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Interesting
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Glad you enjoyed it! 🙂
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Frankly, I am so sick of seeing “selfies.” There has to be some need for attention. Is that attention seeking narcissitic. I guess it could be. However, I think many writers are narcissitic too.
With me, I do not like pictures. They have no value. In taking my picture, I always felt put upon and violated. We pose. They are not natural. They are meant to impress.
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Writers, businessmen, artists, scientists, anybody can be narcissistic but in some profession, there are comparatively larger proportions of narcissists, psychopaths, etc. Also, I quite dislike taking my pictures, too!
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All selfies need to stop end of story.
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Yes! 🙂
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I agree.
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Thanks for reading! 🙂
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Interesting study, but it leaves a lot of crucial questions unanswered. In any research based on self-reported answers to predetermined forced-choice answers, it’s dangerous to arrive at more than tentative hypotheses that need further in-depth study. Characterizing people as psychopathic is a rather damning label and should not be assigned based on a study of one small convenience sample of men. In any case, is there any information about why the men responded as they did to the survey? It’s not unknown for people to make up responses just for the fun of misleading researchers…
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I agree they need to study more about it, but I don’t suppose the subjects answered as they did on purpose, I think they answered honestly.
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