Detect Narcissists on Facebook
Posted by Nick O'Neill on September 22nd, 2008 4:16 PMAccording to a new University of Georgia study, Facebook profiles can be used to detect narcissism. How do you determine narcissism exactly from looking at a Facebook profile? Well “the number of Facebook friends and wallposts that individuals have on their profile pages correlates with narcissism.” The article continued that “Narcissists are also more likely to choose glamorous, self-promoting pictures for their main profile photos, while others are more likely to use snapshots.”
After reading through the article I’ve determined that I must be a narcissist! According to the study not everybody on Facebook is a narcissist. The narcissists tended to have a larger number of contacts on Facebook and use those contacts for self-promotion. Random people were also able to detect narcissists by looking at user profiles.
Many of the younger users who grew up on MySpace and Facebook have been criticized for being overly narcissistic. Unfortunately this study couldn’t determine whether narcissism was growing, only that it is detectable on Facebook. Have you found that Facebook users tend to be more narcissistic? Do you think that it is easier to determine narcissism with the help of Facebook profiles?
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September 22nd, 2008 at 3:22 pm
I think that Narcissism vs using Facebook for business are two different things. My profile meets a lot of the characteristics mentioned but I am by no means a Narcissists. I just like to portray a business like appearance on Facebook because I use it for making contacts and growing my business network. Interesting post though
September 22nd, 2008 at 4:44 pm
In a world where many of us join because others in the workplace have joined, I would think there are better approaches to this question. If we assume the question to be valid (which I'm not at all sure we can), better items to check might include:
- The number of comments left on other people's posts
- Whether they have any altrusitic apps
- Whether they blast posts/apps to all their friends, or only select appropriate friends
There are probably more options than this. Quality of photo and number of friends is so dependent upon the nature of their Facebook relationships that I can't see it as being relevant to the question of narcissism,
September 22nd, 2008 at 5:21 pm
Since I mostly dislike how I look in pictures in general, I mostly use self-promoting pictures as profile pictures. I don't see how that makes me a narcissist; the actual reason for me using self-promoting pictures is rather the opposite of narcissism. Does all kinds of self-promtion correlate with nacrissism then?
And how does being social on Facebook make someone narcissistic? As someone stays active on Facebook their number of friends obviously increase over time, which generates more wall posts.
I recently attended a new school, and therefore has started gaining more friends on facebook. Does me attending a new school make me more narcisstic?
Note: I haven't read the actual study, only this news post.
September 22nd, 2008 at 8:16 pm
Or as the New York Times wrote on Sunday, February 19, 2006:
“Digital cameras - in cellphones, in computers, in hip pockets, even on key chains - have turned self-portraits into a folk art for narcissists.”
Couldn't have said it any better myself!
September 23rd, 2008 at 7:45 am
I think there's something to this, especially considering how many people seem to go in for these groups that cater to ego-stroking by saying you can collect thousands of “friends” by joining them. In reality, the “Make friends! Add me!” groups are nothing but user info collectors, a lot of them actually tell you you must “friend” all the admins, officers, and everyone in the group, and mass-invite all your friends. That isn't friendship, it's playing on people's desire to look popular, in order to collect as many members as possible.
One has to wondder about people who seem to think they have to have a large number of friends on their list. I have even seen individuals complaining about Facebook's limit on friends, capped at - what is it, 5000? Who in the world honestly has 5000 friends? Don't tell me that simply adding everyone under the sun equals “friendship” it doesn't. But apparently some people seem to think so, and having all these names on their list of “friends” makes them feel special, which seems quite narcisistic to me.
Applications can be telling as well, so many people add “top friends” “hot or not” and other friend-ranking applications, all of that is ego-puffing nonsense IMO, and doesn't promote any real friendship or communication. Even “compare people” what's the point other than seeing which of your friends you are most similar to? As if real life hasn't already taught you this, but some people seem to feel they need an application to broadcast how alike they are to their friends on a social networking site.
So this is a great article, it has really touched on something that I've been thinking all along, and what a refreshing change from the zillions of articles out there on the anti-new Facebook crowd.
September 23rd, 2008 at 9:49 am
This is funny…I currently attend UGA and I saw this in our Red&Black newspaper this morning…it was pretty interesting….but I guess im narcissist too…
September 23rd, 2008 at 12:54 pm
Uh, unless someone actually tracked down, interviewed, profiled, and classified the owners of the profiles judged, the only thing a study like this would show would be that 'people who have profiles on Facebook like ones we say are narcissistic are narcissists'; which isn't reallly proof (or even correlation of anything at all).
Feel free to substitute any operative word ('shy', 'egotistical', 'psychotic', 'Presidential') and any social networking site into the above description of the survey to conduct your own and get equally satisfying results.
September 23rd, 2008 at 1:30 pm
Don't judge a book by it's cover? A picture says a thousand words? Do you really think you can tell everything about a person by viewing a photo? Hmmmmm……
Obviously though, some people do get obsessive about their profile pages and carefully count their number of “friends” as a basis to measure their “popularity” and unfortunately sometimes their self worth. Is anyone surprised? It's just another way to feel cool when you can't afford (or aren't old enough yet) to get that fancy car that will make “everyone” jealous of you.
September 25th, 2008 at 5:59 pm
I worked as a coder on this project and we did have the 'owners' of the profiles come in and take a narcissism personality inventory. simultaneously we took a snapshot of their facebook profile (which they gave us access to) and then analyzed their profile. profiles were rated by coders on various concepts relating to narcissism. our scores were related to how narcissistic the individuals were.
additionally, all studies in the social sciences talk about relationships as probabilistic and not deterministic - so it's not that having a lot of friends or having a self-promoting pictures means you are definitiely a narcissist - and certainly no one is saying that these things cause you to be a narcissist… instead, there is a relationship between people having these particular profile characteristics and higher scores on the narcissistic personality inventory.
later we showed narcissists' profiles and non-narcissists' profiles to other, unrelated students and asked them to rate on a scale how narcissistic the person in the profile seemed - and it turned out that untrained undergraduates scores of how narcissistic someone seems correlates to the profile owner's narcissism score
also - most of the time people put flattering pictures of themselves on facebook… this is different from pictures that are 'blatantly self-promoting in a narcissistic way
there was also another interesting study a couple years ago that had celebrities take the narcissism personality inventory and it turns out - they had significantly higher scores than the general population
September 28th, 2008 at 10:35 am
If you have to state publicly “i'm not a narcissist,” guess what that means? don't need no pics for that one…
November 16th, 2008 at 10:33 pm
The only person who should diagnose someone’s narcissism is their PROFESSIONALLY QUALIFIED DOCTOR.
It’s petty gossip and OMG selfish to make such guesses.