It probably comes as little surprise to anyone, but a small exploratory study done on 100 college students from a single university suggests that students who score higher on a test of narcissism also spent more time checking and updating their Facebook profile.
Facebook is currently the world’s largest social network, with over 500 million users. More than 50% of Facebook’s active users log on to Facebook in any given day, while the average user has 130 social connections (what Facebook calls “friends”).
The researcher (Mehdizadeh, 2010) also examined the relationship between narcissism and self-esteem, as well as gender differences in how people use Facebook for self-promotion. “Self-promotion,” according to how it was used in this study, was defined as “any descriptive or visual information that appeared to attempt to persuade others about one’s own positive qualities. ”
Mehdizadeh looked at only five profile features in Facebook: (a) the About Me section, (b) the Main Photo, (c) the first 20 pictures on the View Photos of Me section, (d) the Notes section, and (e) the Status Updates section. The researcher, rating these items on her own, examined to the extent they were considered self-promoting according to the above definition.
What did the research find?