Media
How Narcissists Think Their Social Media Posts Are Received
New research shows narcissists expect others to react positively to their posts.
Posted June 4, 2026 Reviewed by Jessica Schrader
Key points
- A new 10-day diary study tracked how narcissistic traits shape daily behavior on social media.
- Data shows narcissistic admiration links to positive posts and an expectation of favorable outcomes.
- Researchers found narcissistic rivalry tracks with negative posts and low expectations.
Social media gives us the opportunity to communicate with a wide range of people and to curate how we appear to others. This makes it an especially appealing tool for those high in grandiose narcissism. Narcissists crave attention and admiration from others, so a platform that allows them to selectively present themselves in a positive manner (e.g., selecting only the most flattering photos to post), reach a large audience, and receive immediate feedback in the form of likes or comments provides the perfect opportunity to have their egos stroked. Social media is also a good fit for narcissists' social needs. Narcissists tend to prefer social networks that are broad and shallow, rather than interacting with a small pool of people in a more personal and intimate manner. They also tend to be better at first impressions than sustained relationships.
Not surprisingly, many prior studies show that narcissists have more social media friends and followers and are more active social media users. However, this research hasn't really examined how narcissists use social media on a day-to-day basis to enhance their relationships. Do they find that their social media activities are meeting their social needs? A new study by Carmen Șurariu and colleagues just published in the Journal of Research in Personality examined how narcissism relates to daily posting behavior and the social rewards of that behavior.
The Study
All participants completed measures of narcissism at the beginning of the study. The researchers focused on narcissistic traits that occur in the general population to varying degrees, rather than focusing on people with a clinical diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder. Specifically, the study used the Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry Concept to define narcissism. According to this theory, narcissistic individuals have two ways they can maintain their overly positive self-image: admiration and rivalry. Narcissistic admiration involves building themselves up by seeking attention and praise and acting in ways that are charming and appealing to others. Narcissistic rivalry, on the other hand, involves elevating themselves by putting others down. This involves a tendency to disparage potential rivals and perceive others negatively. These two tendencies often go together, but they can have very different social consequences. Narcissistic admiration is generally associated with being well-liked, especially at first acquaintance, while narcissistic rivalry tends to be associated with more hostile behavior and difficulty in relationships with others.
During the study, participants completed a brief daily survey for 10 days. They reported information about their most recent social media post, indicating how positive or negative it was, how much they deliberately tried to present a positive impression to others, and several questions about the social effects of their post, such as how much the post helped them to feel closer to others, receive attention, maintain current relationships, and initiate new relationships.
The Results
The researchers found that participants high in narcissistic admiration tended to engage in more deliberate positive self-presentation and generally posted more positive content. Narcissistic rivalry was associated with the opposite pattern: less effort at positive self-presentation and less positive content overall.
What about the potential social benefits of their social media activity? As the authors expected, those higher in narcissistic admiration believed that their social media posts helped them to initiate new relationships. However, this wasn't explained by how much they deliberately tried to make a good impression. This suggests that participants high in narcissistic admiration simply expected their posts to have a positive impact on others, whether they put a lot of deliberate effort into making a good impression or not. In other words, they appear to believe that they are attractive and charming and that these qualities will shine through and impress others, regardless of whether or not they made deliberate efforts to put their best foot forward.
Those high in narcissistic rivalry showed the opposite pattern. They tended to believe their posts negatively affected their ability to start new relationships with others. In addition, they also believed their posts negatively affected their existing relationships. Once again, these effects did not depend on how much deliberate effort they made to present themselves positively. This suggests that narcissistic rivalry contributes to negative expectations about how social media posts will be perceived by others, regardless of the type of content actually being posted.
What It All Means
Narcissistic admiration appears to lead people to not only present a more positive impression on social media, but to expect positive reactions to their posts, regardless of how hard they try to impress others. They simply expect to impress. Narcissistic rivalry, on the other hand, leads to negative expectations of how others will respond to their social media posts.
What these results highlight is how much of this is in their heads. Narcissistic individuals expect people to respond in a particular way, regardless of their own efforts. We do know from prior research that those high in narcissistic admiration make better first impressions and that narcissistic rivalry tends to rub others the wrong way. But we still don't know whether the same pattern occurs on social media, or whether participants' expectations about how their posts were received were actually accurate.
There can be a mismatch between how social media users think others are responding, and the impressions they actually make on others. For example, studies have shown that people with low self-esteem view social media as an opportunity to express themselves more openly than they would offline, but their tendency to express more negative emotions in their social media posts actually leads other people to form more negative impressions of them. In reality, people can be skeptical about how accurately positive social media posts reflect someone's life and they may actually feel more connected to people who post content that feels less deliberate and posed. This suggests that those high in narcissistic admiration may only think they are making a great impression on others.
