Ever wondered what your Facebook profile says about you that you might not have intended? Researchers from the University of Georgia have studied narcissism in students and found that the personality trait is often reflected in their profiles on social networking site Facebook.The study looked at the profiles of 129 students who had also volunteered to take personality tests as part of the research. Research assistants reviewed and rated the profiles based on a number of objective measures such as number of friends, length of "about me" section etc. and subjectively rated other parts of the profile such as the content of the "about me" section, profile photos etc.
Unsurprisingly, the results showed a strong correlation between the number of friends on Facebook and a user's narcissism. The pictures that the users had posted of themselves tended to be ones that made them look more attractive than they really were. These are things that one would expect to find from a narcissist. One surprising discovery was that although in real life, narcissists are generally found to be interesting on first contact, online their textual content, including the "about me" section, was judged to be lacking in entertainment value. Unsurprisingly it did contain a tendency for self promotion.
The researchers also studied how other users viewed these profiles. They took another group of students who were asked to rate each profile for narcissism and rate certain features previously identified in the profile.
On the whole, the results of the second group agreed with the research assistants ratings. The research showed that the students based their opinions mainly on the number of friends and apparent self-promotion of the photo on the profile page.
More positively, the study's authors conclude by saying that most users are not using social media for self promotion and this is why narcissists can be distinguished via their profiles.
You may read this article and notice that a high proportion of your social media friends seem to have narcissistic personalities, this makes sense because of the high number of social contacts narcissists tend to have.
Looking at the wider implications of this research, if it's possible to spot this personality trait so easily, presumably it could be possible to spot others too. Could it be as easy to tell is someone is an introvert or extrovert, neurotic or pervert just from their Facebook profile? If it is, you can bet someone somewhere (probably the social media sites themselves) are building algorithms that work it out automatically in order to direct better targeted advertising at users.
