Most people who have smartphones take selfies. While this may be a normative statement and not a fact, I was wondering if there was a science behind selfies. Are there scientific studies being conducted on selfies?
Let’s start with defining the world “Selfie”. According to About Tech a selfie is “a picture of yourself usually shared on any social networking”. The phenomenon spread throughout the world and has been recently added to the Oxford Dictionary.
(image by Caspar a you-tuber)
After some research I found the answer to my question. Yes, there are studies being conducted on selfies. But what are they researching?
A study conducted by Ohio State claims that “men who posted more photos of themselves online scored higher in measures of narcissism and psychopathy.” This study began with 800 men, ages 18-40, filling out an online questionnaire determining their photo posting habits. The questionnaire included
- how often do you post photos of yourself?
- do you edit your photos before posting them?
- questions about anti-social behavior
- questions about self- objectification”
The results were “posting more photos was correlated with both narcissism and psychopathy. Editing photos, however, was only associated with narcissism, and not psychopathy. Narcissism measures inflated self-image (often motivated by underlying insecurity), while psychopathy involves a lack of empathy and impulsive behavior.These findings don’t mean that men who post selfies are actually narcissists or psychopaths, it does mean that they scored higher than others in these anti-social traits, although they were still within the normal range of behavior. The Ohio State study also found that editing photos of oneself was associated with higher levels of self-objectification.”
(picture by FOOYOH)
The study above describes the effects of selfies on men. How about women; do women taking selfies also link to narcissism and psychopathy? What are the effects of selfies on women?
Petya Eckler a researcher at the University of Strathclyde claims,” The more women are exposed to “selfies” and other photos on social media, the more they compare themselves negatively.”
Researchers from University of Strathclyde, Ohio University and University of Iowa surveyed 881 female college students in the US to come to the conclusion in the latter. The questions were about
- Facebook use
- eating and exercising regimes
- body images
After completing their research they concluded that there is a link between “time spent on social networks and negative comparisons about body image.”
“Spending more time on Facebook is not connected to developing a bad relationship with food, but there is a connection to poor body image,” Petya Eckler, of the University of Strathclyde, in Glasgow, told the BBC.
(image by My Counseling Service Australia)
Another study was conducted in three business schools in Europe “titled “Tagger’s Delight? Disclosure and liking behavior in Facebook: the effects of sharing photographs amongst multiple known social circles”. Four professors came to the conclusion that there is a correlation between posting selfies and levels of intimacy.
However, remember that correlation need not equal causation.
To prove the correlation the professors “asked 508 Facebook users with an average age of 24 to rank how close they feel to their friends, coworkers and relatives who also use Facebook. They then compared those answers to how many selfies those people posted. Overwhelmingly, the more someone posted selfies, the lower they ranked on the intimacy scales of the participants. But of course, given that these selfie morons are clearly self-centered, they don’t even realize what they’re doing.”
These three studies are observational and not experimental. The studies asked a group of people to answer questions; there is always the possibility that people lied on the questionnaire, did not read the questions and just put random answers or did not understand the questions.
More studies need to be conducted before we can prove that selfies are purely negative.
Your view on the topic of selfies I agree with and I like all the statistics and studies you used. Although, they are not fully persuasive because I think for it to be truly effective, you would need to ask men and women the same questions to see how each gender reacted if it is a gender-based selfie study. How do men use facebook? What are their eating habits/ fitness regime? For women: do they edit their selfies, how many selfies do they take, etc.? Could this study be experimental? Possibly, but I agree this study is better being observational and the claim that men that take more selfies are more likely to be narcissists is pretty far-fetched.
I never thought something so simple as a selfie could be so negative. These correlations reported are really interesting, but at the same time make sense once it is brought up. Today’s technology is crazy and I believe it has a lot to do with peoples outlooks on themselves and others in today’s world. At the same time these are all observational studies and I think more experimenting needs to be done to see all of the negative effects a selfie can bring to someone. The correlations found though are interesting and I wonder if there are other underlying psychological aspects of selfie taking.
I agree with the researchers in the fact that there is a correlation between selfies and personality, it’s blatantly obvious. However, these are observational and more testing would need to be done to prove that selfies pose any risk. In order to create an experiment on this topic, one would need a broadly randomized group, where half could freely take, edit, and post their selfies, while the other group would not. A questionnaire could still be taken before and after to reveal the subject’s emotions. However, like many experiments, this would come with an incredible amount of third variables. One of those potentially being the need for attention or a way to prove self worth. The researchers would need to find people without a history of mental instability or self judgement, but again this would be incredibly difficult considering we all judge ourselves to a certain extent.
I believe that too much of anything can be bad for you, but at a normal level I would deem that selfies cause no direct harm. An article on PSYCHALIVE http://www.psychalive.org/obsession-with-selfies/, tells the stories of some extreme cases of selfie taking. The excessive amount of taking selfies can be due lack of self worth or beauty. These extremes cause one to need approval from others which they can gain after posting a “good”, edited selfie, but in reality this solution is not helping them solve their physiological insecurities.