People sharing selfies on social media are viewed as less successful, lonely and insecure: Study

Love taking a gallery of selfies every time you step out? Study says your friends might think you are having a diminishing sense of self-worth. A survey studying what people think of those who click selfies gave away some shocking results. 

Published in the Journal of Research in Personality, the scientists conducted a novel experiment with hundreds of actual Instagram users to determine if there are certain types of self-image posts that cause others to make snap judgements about the user's personality.

The study revealed that most people judge individuals who post a lot of selfies as less likeable, less successful, more insecure and less open to new experiences than individuals who share posed photos taken by someone else.

"Even when two feeds had similar content, such as depictions of achievement or travel, feelings about the person who posted selfies were negative and feelings about the person who posted posies were positive," said study lead author Chris Barry, professor at Washington State University and reported by IANS. "It shows there are certain visual cues, independent of context, that elicit either a positive or negative response on social media," Barry said.

For the study, the research team analysed data from two groups of students. The first group, consisting of 30 undergraduates, were asked to complete a personality questionnaire and agreed to let the researchers use their 30 most recent Instagram posts for the experiment.

The second group of students consisted of 119 undergraduates. This group was asked to rate the Instagram profiles of the first group on 13 attributes such as self-absorption, low self-esteem, extraversion and success, using only the images from those profiles.

The research team then analysed the data from to quetionnaire to determine what kind of visual cues in the first group of students' photos made consistent personality ratings from the second group.

It was also found that the students who posted pic taken by others were judged as having higher self-esteem, adventurous, less lonely, , more dependable, more successful and having the potential for being a good friend, while the reverse was viewed for students with a greater number of selfies on their feed.