Selfies refer to a portrait photograph of one individual captured with either a phone camera or a camera at an arm’s length and which captures the individual alone or with others and mostly posted on social media platforms. Narcissism on another hand is merely the existence of excess self-love for an individual physical appearance including the mode of dressing and the body physique. Although the topic of selfies and narcissism have received much attention of psychologists with divergent opinions surrounding it, most of them still believe that selfies are somewhat linked to narcissism and that both men and women post selfies on social media as a result of influence by narcissism. Additionally, these studies reveal the fact that differences in gender are likely to foretell human behavior at online social media platforms.
A question has also been asked over and over again on which people post selfies on social media the most. Women tend to post selfies on social media platforms than men do ( Arpaci et al. 2018). Additionally, young people have been seen to have more affection for selfies than is available in their parents’ generation. Social media has been used by many people to posts photographs to promote businesses and seek customers through it. The youth and women who tend to post more selfies on social media mostly do it with an intention to promote themselves. From this, it is evident that selfies are a product of the need to mount self-promotion, a factor which connects selfies to narcissism.
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According to research, ladies tend to communicate with other people to build rapport with other people. Nevertheless, men interact with the intention of establishing a social stand and control. From this, it is pretty obvious that men tend to pursue recognition and social approval while women are keen on building a relationship or a string of friends on social media ( Sorokowsk et al., 2015). With the existence of such gender-based behaviors, a clear indication exists that gender plays a part in controlling the connection between narcissism and posting selfies on social media. To further add on this, these facts too present a concept that the behavior for posting selfies in men is primarily brought about by the narcissism that it is in women. This even brings out a more explicit relationship between relationship and narcissism ( Sorokowsk et al., 2016).
In other scholarly articles by psychologists, selfies tend to offer great opportunities for people who got self-admiration to express their narcissist behaviors and to show the people how much they love themselves. Weiser (2015) believes that people get the opportunity through social media to satisfy their narcissistic desires. Furthermore, the narcissists for the love they got for themselves get convinced that they look more attractive than other people. For this reason, they resort to posting their selfies on social media platforms as a means of striving to garner sexual admiration and attention. From this illustration too, the link between selfies and narcissism is seen from a far distance. Narcissism is once again presented as one of the main reasons that push individuals to post their selfies on social media.
Finally, on analyzing the different impacts that photos pose on the audience vis-à-vis how audiences view selfies, distinct differences are seen. Many people who consider the two sets of photos hold the belief that people in selfies appear to be more confident and more narcissistic that the people in the other standard photos ( Krämer 2017 ) . Further to that, the people in selfies are perceived by social media audience to be less open and less trustworthy. It is notable that even the viewers of selfies are in a position to detect the self-love that appears in selfie takers. This too draws a clear connection between narcissism and the selfie-taking behavior among men and women.
References
Arpaci, I., Kesici, Ş., & Baloğlu, M. (2018). The moderating effect of gender in the relationship between narcissism and selfie-posting behavior. Personality and Individual Differences , 134 , 71-74.
Krämer, N. C., Feurstein, M., Kluck, J. P., Meier, Y., Rother, M., & Winter, S. (2017). Beware of selfies: The impact of phototype on impression formation based on social networking profiles. Frontiers in psychology , 8 , 188.
Sorokowski, P, Sorokowska, A., Oleszkiewicz, A., Frackowiak, T., & Pisanski, K. (2016). Selfies and personality: Who posts self-portrait photographs?. Personality and Individual Differences , 90 119-123.
Sorokowski, P, Sorokowska, A., Oleszkiewicz, A., Frackowiak, T., & Pisanski, K. (2015). Selfie posting behaviors are associated with narcissism among men ?. Personality and Individual Differences , 85 123-127.
Weiser, E. B. (2015). # Me: Narcissism and its facets as predictors of selfie-posting frequency. Personality and Individual Differences , 86 , 477-481.
