How Narcissists Engage With Other People’s Selfies

Narcissistic Man

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We can now predict a person’s personality with a good degree of accuracy from the types of selfies they post. For example, people high in agreeableness and openness tend to display emotional positivity in their selfie posts, whereas people high in conscientiousness post selfies displaying more private locations. Narcissistic individuals have an inflated view of themselves in terms of their appearance and popularity, and self-promote on social media reflected by the selfies they post. However, while we can predict personality traits from selfies posted, less is known about the extent to which narcissistic individuals interact on social media, in the form of providing likes and comments on selfies posted by other people.

This issue was investigated by Jung-Ah Lee and Yongjun Sung from the Department of Psychology, Korea University, Seoul, Korea. The researchers employed an online survey sent to 319 respondents who had ever posted a selfie on social media and used the following measures in their study.

• The Narcissistic Personality Inventory, which included items such as “I like having authority over other people” and “I like to look at myself in the mirror.”
• Involvement in feedback received on their own selfies, such as comments and "likes," to the selfies respondents posted.
• Observation on selfies posted by others: “Do you carefully examine others’ selfies?” and “Do you carefully examine the comments and number of ‘likes’ on others’ selfies?”
• Attitude toward selfie-posting behaviour in terms of its pleasantness, enjoyableness, value, benefit, bad or good, importance, usefulness, and satisfaction.
• Intention to post selfies: “I will make an effort to post selfies”; “I plan to post selfies on a regular basis.”

They found that selfies accounted for 35.6 percent of the photos uploaded to platforms such as Facebook, X, and Instagram. Around 72 percent of respondents posted general selfies, with 54 percent posting travel selfies, 49 percent posting hobby selfies, and 48 percent posting food selfies. Preferred locations for selfie taking were 74 percent school or work, 68 percent café or pub, and 8.3 percent gym. Overall, the more respondents observed the selfies of others, the more likely they were to leave likes or comments on these.

Narcissism

In addition, the researchers found respondents who scored higher on narcissism to be more involved in the engagement they receive (likes, comments) on their own selfie posts and were also more aware of the selfies posted by others. Furthermore, those scoring higher in narcissism considered selfie posting more positively and indicated they were willing to continue posting selfies in the future.

Consistent with previous studies, this research suggests that narcissistic individuals are not just concerned with their own selfies but also with how much they assess the selfies of others. This is called comparative self-enhancement and enables narcissists to maintain an inflated view of themselves by comparing themselves to others.

Although narcissistic individuals reported noticing the selfies of others, they did not report liking or commenting on these, which suggests that narcissistic individuals are simply monitoring what others are posting merely as a way of making comparisons to them, but not necessarily giving validation to others.

One limitation of this study is that it relied on self-report, which we know can be subject to response bias, perhaps especially so in the case of narcissists. However, the findings do go some way to contributing to our understanding of narcissistic personality traits.