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The Best Science Writing Online 2012
Showcasing more than fifty of the most provocative, original, and significant online essays from 2011, The Best Science Writing Online 2012 will change the way...
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Are you a narcissist? Check your recent Facebook activity.
Social-networking sites offer users easy ways to present idealized images of themselves, even if those ideals don’t always square with their real-world personalities. Psychology researcher Soraya Mehdizadeh has discovered a way to poke through the offline-online curtain: she has used Facebook to predict a person’s level of narcissism and self-esteem.
Mehdizadeh, who conducted the study as an undergraduate at Toronto’s York University, gained access to the Facebook accounts of 100 college students and measured activities like photo sharing, wall postings and status updates; she also studied how frequently users logged on and how often they remained online during each session. Her findings were published recently in Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking.
After measuring each subject using the Narcissism Personality Inventory and Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, Mehdizadeh, who graduated from York this past spring, discovered narcissists and people with lower self-esteem were more likely to spend more than an hour a day on Facebook and were more prone to post self-promotional photos (striking a pose or using Photoshop, for example). Narcissists were also more likely to showcase themselves through status updates (using phrases like “I’m so glamorous I bleed glitter”) and wall activity (posting self-serving links like “My Celebrity Look-alikes”).
Self-esteem and narcissism are often interrelated but don’t always go hand in hand. Some psychologists believe that narcissists—those who have a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, a need for admiration, as well as a lack of empathy—unconsciously inflate their sense of self-importance as a defense against feeling inadequate. Not enough empirical research has been produced to confirm that link, although Mehdizadeh’s study seems to support it. Because narcissists have less capacity to sustain intimate or long-term relationships, Mehdizadeh thinks that they would be more drawn to the online world of virtual friends and emotionally detached communication.
Although it seems that Facebook can be used by narcissists to fuel their inflated egos, Mehdizadeh stops short of proclaiming that excessive time spent on Facebook can turn regular users into narcissists. She also notes that social-networking sites might ultimately be found to have positive effects when used by people with low self-esteem or depression.
“If individuals with lower self-esteem are more prone to using Facebook,” she says, “the question becomes, ‘Can Facebook help raise self-esteem by allowing patients to talk to each other and help each other in a socially interactive environment?’ I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing that people with low self-esteem use Facebook.”
Editor's note: This article was published in the print issue with the title, "Status Update: 'I'm So Glamorous'."
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12 Comments
Add CommentAre cults made of people with low self esteem through a process of focussing this low self esteem and transposing it into another person. The cult leader.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo really absolving themselves of the need for self esteem by supporting a superego that reflects value back upon them through the cult?
I found that Facebook is a great way to share our ideas including words, pictures, sound, and video files of all kinds. The sharing of ideas is important to us all because it helps bring about a new social media. This social media helps educate as well as see what others are thinking and doing in life. It is sad that some have psychologically evaluated other people who are using Facebook for sharing. It is fun to take part in giving others ideas for helping them see the light too. What is the light? The light is ideas.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFacebook as well as Twitter gives the individual the opportunity to take part in idea giving. For it is ideas that are also spiritual some times and people like sharing spiritual ideas. Information is power and I like giving positive powerful solutions. Positive powerful solutions inspire, educate, and help lead the way to even greater things in the future.
However - people with low self esteem are vulnerable to the negative consequences of the freedom of information.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAgreed
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDouglasHayBuettner - You say that information is power and you like giving positive powerful solutions to others. How long have you had this narcissistic god complex? You are the source of power for others? They exist solely for you to improve? Your very post on this thread confirms everything the article claims. Your post agrandizes your own contributions and focuses solely on you and how wonderful you are.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI thought this article was total garbage until I read your post. Keep your light to your self. Not everyone thinks the way you do or feels the need of a "solution". I use Facebook to keep track of family and friends. I almost never update my status because my status does not change much.
I find it appalling the number of teenaged girls that want to "friend" me because they know my son. I'm old enough to be their father if not their grandfather!
Facebook is a tool just like the phone or computer.
So I suppose the connection between Narcism and self-esteem might be that the Narcissists are allowed to tap into this low self-esteem of individuals.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo the effect is almost like the production of a global 'mind' where individual facebook users effectively become components of an extended mind. (or even brain) And a mental illness might develop.
One would really have to give this idea some thought as one might be able to relate the behaviour of individuals to the extension of their minds through connectivity of the computer. One might see through careful analysis the way a virus might transpose - transmute- transduce, multiply, metabolise etc to produce a 'physical' symptom. i.e. through the mere act of the exchange of information.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisi.e as unlike viruses the physical agents are not physically connected.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGee Mister bucketofsquid, you sure are full of yourself. While DouglasHayBuettner and I are too, you probably don't recognize it in yourself. You rail against Douglas in a presumptive and debasing manner for sharing his thought, which I too will engage in now...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYour cynicism will probably keep you in your bubble of negativity which may be perfectly acceptable for you. And thank you sir for discouraging and impeding the propagation of thoughts. Maybe you should follow your own advice and keep your "light" to yourself. (Where "light" is defined as the aggrandizement of the values you hold to illuminate your path).
It seems more appropriate in a forum like sciam to be constructively critical of someone's ideas... but there's always more productive things you could do, such as cutting down the contributions that you make to your own life during your alone time.
I say this because it's just my assumption that this article pissed you off because it wasted your time... hence, you probably don't have much alone time... hence, you spend most of your time unaware of the self-righteous bubble of negativity with which you reside in.
Hence, the sarcasm of "alone time".
My argument is neither well constructed nor cogent, but hopefully now you may begin to realize and take joy in the dynamics of this form of your malignant and hypocritical nature.
Reflectogenesis,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI like your lines of thought. Narcissism seems to be the inescapable neurosis of our widely interconnected culture of media today. In my experience and my projection of that experience onto situations of global schema, it seems like we are already in the situation of a global-minded narcissistic mental illness... exacerbated all the more by power grabs to widen the disparity in resources, both natural and social.
Just curious as to what the statistics say about the frequency of narcissists and people with low self-esteem either trolling online news articles and forums to elicit angry responses, or feeding said trolls. (See above...)
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