An Experimental Test of How Selfies Change Social Judgments on Facebook

Abstract

Selfies are everywhere on social media. Research has focused only on who is posting selfies and has not addressed the audience members viewing selfies. This study aims to fill this gap by analyzing the judgments people make of selfies posted on Facebook. Using an online experiment, we test how including a selfie on a Facebook status update changes people's appraisals of narcissism, message appropriateness, and social attraction. We also consider how the valence and intimacy of the status update text interplay with the selfie to change social judgments. Participants rated posts with selfies as more narcissistic and inappropriate, and less socially attractive. Selfie evaluations also depended upon the valence and intimacy of the status update text. Gender of the selfie poster did not influence evaluation of posts. One implication from these results is that posting selfies on social media may lead to negative judgments about the poster.

Selfitis Behavior: Assessing the Italian Version of the Selfitis Behavior Scale and Its Mediating Role in the Relationship of Dark Traits with Social Media Addiction

“…In contrast to Lin et al's study [8] reporting mostly weak correlations below 0.30, the expected associations were in line with the idea that selfitis behavior is directly connected to social media, since individuals can fulfil their social needs, such as self-presentation and the need to belong to. The observed positive associations were also in line with studies demonstrating that selfie-sharing on social media improves one's self-esteem/mood through "likes" [72] and is related to self-presentation behaviors and relationship construction [30,73]. Similarly, and consistent with the authors' expectations, the positive associations between SBS and the number of daily selfies and of friends/followers on social media provided evidence for the criterion-related validity, although correlation values were weak probably due to the lack of any accurate psychometrics measures of the two criteria.…”

Selfie Expectancies Among Adolescents: Construction and Validation of an Instrument to Assess Expectancies Toward Selfies Among Boys and Girls

“…In fact, selfies may help individuals express and fortify their own identity in an online context. According to some scholars ( Nadkarni and Hofmann, 2012 ; Nguyen, 2014 ; Katz and Crocker, 2015 ; Sorokowska et al, 2016 ; Diefenbach and Christoforakos, 2017 ; Etgar and Amichai-Hamburger, 2017 ; Taylor et al, 2017 ; Reich et al, 2018 ), self-presentation, self-promotion, and self-approval are prominent features of selfie experience.…”

“…According to Nadkarni and Hofmann (2012) , social media use fulfills two social needs: self-presentation and the need to belong. Selfie-sharing on SNS improves one’s self-esteem/mood through “likes” ( Reich et al, 2018 ), and seems to be especially related to self-presentation behaviors and relationship construction ( Sorokowska et al, 2016 ; Taylor et al, 2017 ).…”

Adolescents’ selfie-taking and selfie-editing: A revision of the photo manipulation scale and a moderated mediation model

“…This phenomenon requires further research (Boursier & Manna, 2018b;Bruno et al, 2018;McLean et al, 2019) to more fully understand the possible risks and opportunities related to selfie behavior (e.g., Boursier et al, 2020a;Boursier et al, 2020c;Boursier & Manna, 2018b;Diefenbach & Christoforakos, 2017;McLean et al, 2019). Concerning the opportunities offered by selfie-taking and selfie-sharing, some studies have shown that these activities appear to (i) provide new material for creative works, allowing creators to manage emotions (Bruno et al, 2018;Diefenbach & Christoforakos, 2017), (ii) improve individuals' self-esteem and mood due to "likes" and positive feedback received from others (Reich et al, 2018;Toma, 2013), (iii) enhance selfconfidence and self-attractiveness (Boursier & Manna, 2018b;Grogan et al, 2018), and (iv) contribute to relationship construction (Chua & Chang, 2016;Sorokowska et al, 2016;Taylor et al, 2017). Other studies have found that selfietaking and selfie-sharing represent habitual behaviors that help pass the time, facilitated by needs to belong, document, archive, retain special moments, and be creative (Bij de Vaate et al, 2018;Etgar & Amichai-Hamburger, 2017;Sung et al, 2016).…”