• More Blogs
• Observations »
• Bering in Mind »
• Cross-check »
• Extinction Countdown »
• Solar at Home »
• Expeditions »
• Guest Blog »
• Anecdotes from the Archive »

A friend I’ve been trying to convince to join Facebook forwarded me a LiveScience story this afternoon about a study that found that a person’s narcissism can be predicted by how he or she uses the popular social networking site.

In the study, which appears in the October issue of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 129 Facebook users participated in a survey designed to pick up narcissistic personality traits. Another group of college kids then examined the 129 users’ Facebook pages for evidence of such narcissism.

The findings, in a nutshell: The more info that users (or their friends) posted about themselves, the more narcissistic they were deemed to be. They were also the ones most likely to have sexier and more self-promoting main profile photos.

I use Facebook regularly, so the study begged an obvious question: Am I a narcissist?

So I read the study. It was fun to see Facebook behavior described in more clinical terms. To wit: “A measure of self-promoting quotes was created by taking the mean of the coders’ judgments of quote arrogance and self-promotion.” And: “A measure of main photo sexiness was created by taking the mean of the coders’ judgments of how sexy and modest (reversed) and clothed (reversed) the individual in the main photo appeared to be.”

When I compared myself to the averages for four criteria, I had mixed results. I have almost twice as many friends (319) as the average user (171) in the survey; am a member of about a third as many groups as the average (12 vs. 35), and have no text in the “About Me” section (the average was 5 lines). The average number of wall posts was 480 in the survey. I can’t figure out how to count mine, but I’m pretty sure it’s not that high.

It wasn’t just the quantity of social interaction that correlated with narcissism, though. There was also the issue of main photo attractiveness (ahem) and self-promotion. To really answer the question, I’d need to have an objective person look at my profile. I emailed the authors, W. Keith Campbell and Laura Buffardi, an associate professor of psychology and a graduate student, respectively, at the University of Georgia, and asked them if they would mind looking at my Facebook page and give me a “diagnosis.” No dice.

“We are trying to be very cautious with these results and I don't think it would be appropriate to claim we have developed a valid narcissism diagnostic tool that would work for individual assessments,” Campbell replied politely.

That got me to wondering: Does a guy who wants to know what a study says about him, then decides to blog about it, really need to go that far to look for evidence of narcissism? But enough about me; what about me?

7 Comments

1. 1. SourPuss 06:11 PM 9/26/08

   Seems like a cheap ploy to get more friend adds on facebook.

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

2. 2. steve1988 06:33 PM 9/26/08

   129 people? Please. The findings of this poorly designed, unscientific study just say that people PERCEIVE certain Facebook behaviors to be narcissistic. Anecdotally, most of the people I know on Facebook with HUGE profiles are very insecure. A former friend of mine on Facebook has narcissistic personality disorder, and his profile is nearly blank.

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

3. 3. proadventurer 09:50 PM 9/27/08

   By this measure I am a total narcissist, but I am also very altruistic in real life, so I guess I got good balance.

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

4. 4. pjeuck in reply to steve1988 11:33 AM 9/28/08

   DSM IV indicates that Narcissistic Personality Disorder afflicts about 1% of the population. This means that in a study containing a group of 129 people one would statistically expect only 1.3 narcissists. The study seems to be based on a reasonable premis, but certainly no conclusions could be drawn from such a small and uncontrolled study.
   
   NPD is s very serious personality disorder, especially for those involved in a relationship with an individual who is a narcissist. My father had NPD and I have been in therapy for the past five years recovering from the damage of my childhood. I am now 53 yrs and I suffered many years before finally getting the help I needed.

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

5. 5. SJC 12:52 PM 9/28/08

   pjeuck, I don't believe that they are specifically adressing the disorder, just the personality trait.

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

6. 6. sarahj in reply to steve1988 07:15 PM 9/30/08

   You can be simultaneously narcissistic and insecure! But yes, not a very scientific study, and I'm sure there will be proper studies to follow. Because the USA spends research money on such important topics.

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

7. 7. Pazuzu 06:10 PM 11/25/08

   I'm curious about the relationship between narcissism and feelings of insecurity. In the course of my life I have been closely associated with two people who probably had NPD. I have never seen any evidence that feelings of insecurity underlie their disturbances,although that's what most their observers claimed. It seems that the most parsimonious explanation of their disorders is that they suffered from the single delusion that they are special people who are superior to us mere mortals. This delusion is sometimes angrily defended, but isn't that the case with all delusions? I'm not a psychologist, so I'd be interested in professional opinions about this.

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this