You might feel a little hopeless when you think about what social media has become in the age of selfies. It seems like everyone is posing for selfies in front of everything from national monuments to beach parties. Social psychology researchers are trying to understand why this trend is so prevalent. A new study uses a well-established theory in social psychology to give us some perspective on who is most likely to post selfies and why.
According to research published in September 2016 by Eunice Kim and colleagues at the University of Florida, there are 93 million selfie posts every day, but there are few studies that can predict selfie posting. They note that narcissism is the personality trait most associated with it, but that’s not necessarily a predictor. Not everyone high in narcissism posts selfies regularly.
Rather than focusing on personality alone, the University of Florida researchers based their work on the “theory of planned behavior” by social psychologist Isaac Eisen of the University of Massachusetts, which links attitudes to behaviors. The theory of planned behavior builds on a large body of work by Eisen and others over the past 30 years to provide clarity on the somewhat murky connection between what people believe and what they do. You may believe that it’s important to recycle paper in your home, but when it comes to separating paper from pizza, you don’t always act on that belief.
According to the theory of planned behavior, attitudes are just one factor needed to predict behavior. You have to believe that the behavior is one that others share (subjective norm) and that you are capable of carrying out that behavior (perceived behavioral control). These three components will in turn predict your intention to act in a way that is consistent with your attitude. Only when you have that intention will you carry out the behavior?
In the case of selfies, people who will eventually post their selfies have to hold the attitude that posting selfies is valuable because it’s fun and can enhance your self-image. They then have to view the behavior as a social norm because their peers also share it. You may think it’s fun to post selfies, but if you feel like you’re too “old” to do it or your friends will think you’re snobby, you won’t do it, or you’ll only post it to your closest friends and family. The next factor, perceived behavioral control, refers to how easy or difficult you think it is to engage in posting selfies. If you’ve never figured out how Instagram works, or if you’re not sure how good you are at taking selfies, you won’t engage in this trend at all.
Now we come to the fourth predictor of selfie posting, which you probably thought of first—the narcissistic personality trait. As Kim and her colleagues point out in the study:
“A core component of narcissism is grandiosity, which involves an exaggerated sense of self-importance…. To affirm and maintain overly positive self-views, narcissists engage in a range of self-regulatory strategies such as seeking admiration or fantasizing about their self-esteem.”
They form their identity around the impressions they feel they make on others. Selfies provide the perfect opportunity for people to present self-promotional content to those in their circle. According to the TPB model, then, narcissists must have a specific intention to post selfies, which would then be the final link in the relationship between attitudes and behavior. The TPB doesn’t typically take personality into account, but in the case of selfies, narcissism is such a crucial factor that without it, the model wouldn’t work.
To test this model for understanding selfie use, the research team asked 85 respondents (only two of whom were male) to give them access to their Instagram accounts over six weeks so that the number of selfies they posted could be counted. Instead of relying on self-reports (as most other studies have done), the researchers were able to determine exactly how many selfies participants had posted.
Now for the results: The statistical model predicting selfie use from the TPB and narcissism showed that, as expected, all four factors significantly influenced the intention to post selfies. In contrast, intentions predicted the number of selfies. Although narcissism proved to be a predictor of selfie behavior, it wasn’t enough on its own. People also need to view posting selfies as something natural, fun, and easy to do. Instagram makes all of that possible.
You might conclude from this study that all selfie posters are narcissists. However, there was plenty of room left in the model Predictive of other effects, even beyond those measured in this study. Part of the story of selfie posting is about narcissism, but a lot of it also has to do with social norms in which selfies are seen as fun, valuable, and part of connecting you to the larger culture.
The authors believe that posting selfies could have benefits. For people high in narcissism, yes, it’s a way to create a certain identity. But is it so bad? People with narcissistic tendencies need to construct a self-image that they believe others will view favorably. And because posting selfies offers a viable way to do this, it could have therapeutic effects. No one is harmed in the process, no one is forced to look at all these selfies, and perhaps, over time, the individual could feel confident enough to be able to move on to other ways of expressing their self-image. After all, the participants in this study were college-age individuals whose identities were still forming. In that sense, posting selfies is no different from other forms of identity expression and testing. Kim and her group also believe that selfies can be used for socially constructive reasons. The Ice Bucket Challenge has used selfies as a way to raise awareness of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), or Lou Gehrig’s disease. There were very few critics of this movement at the time, and in the long run, it turned out to have beneficial effects on research funding.
In short, there is a great deal of criticism of selfie culture and an implicit assumption that it merely promotes more narcissism. However, personality alone is not enough to motivate selfie use, and the idea that we construct our identities in a socially constructed world may be useful in understanding the many paths to satisfaction.
