REAL LIFE NEWS: PEOPLE WHO TAKE LOTS OF SELFIES COULD BE PSYCHOPATHS
by Hazed
If you have a friend whose social media feed is full of selfies, you might think they are slightly vain and self-centred. But a new study indicates something more worrying: they could be psychpaths.
Researchers analysed data from an online survey which 800 men aged between 18 and 40 completed. They were asked how often they posted photos and whether they cropped, filtered or edited them before posting them. Then they were asked to fill in the standard questionnaires used to identify anti-social tendencies and self-objectification.
The results show that the men who post a lot of selfies score higher on the tests that measure narcissism and psychopathy. Those who edited the photos are more self-objectified and have stronger narcissistic tendencies.
But you shouldn’t start to worry about them, because the lead author of the study – Jesse Fox from the Ohio State University – explained that the results don’t mean that men who post selfies a lot are definitely narcissists or psychopaths. It just means they all scored a bit higher than average on these anti-social traits, while still being in the normal range of behaviour.
The study only looked at men because the dataset they used, which came from a magazine, didn’t include women. Fox is currently doing a follow-up study which does include women, and indications are that the results are similar.
