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The role of narcissism in self-promotion on Instagram

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2016.05.042Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Instagram users higher in narcissism tend to

  • Post more selfies and self-presented photos

  • Update their profile picture more often and spend more time

  • Rate their profile pictures as more physically attractive

  • GE is a positive and LA is a negative predictor of self-promotion behaviors

Abstract

Instagram, the rising photo-sharing social networking site, has gained an enormous amount of global popularity. This study examined the relationship between narcissism and Instagram users' self-promoting behavior. A total of 212 active Instagram users in Korea completed an online survey. The results showed that individuals higher in narcissism tended to post selfies and self-presented photos, update their profile picture more often, and spend more time on Instagram, as compared to their counterparts. They also rated their Instagram profile pictures as more physically attractive. Additionally, the results showed that Grandiose Exhibitionism positively predicted and Leadership/Authority negatively predicted the frequency of selfie postings and profile picture updates, as well as profile picture evaluations. However, Entitlement/Exploitativeness exhibited no effect on any of the self-promotion behaviors on Instagram.

Introduction

Social networking sites (hereafter SNSs), such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram provide a new venue for individuals to present themselves and manage their social relationships online. With the emergence of social technologies available to Internet and smartphone users, SNS-based communication provides novel venues for self-disclosure, self-presentation, and impression management (Rui & Stefanone, 2013). In particular, Instagram, a mobile photo-sharing application, has attracted SNS users to present themselves via a variety of photographs and short videos by making the process easier than ever. A recent study indicated that two key motivations for using Instagram are self-expression and social interaction, suggesting that Instagram users utilize pictures of all sorts of things to present their actual and ideal selves, as well as to maintain social relationships (Lee, Lee, Moon, & Sung, 2015).

A growing body of personality research suggests that narcissism is one of the most powerful predictors of self-promotional content via social media (Carpenter, 2012). Narcissism refers to “a personality trait reflecting a grandiose and inflated self-concept” and is characterized by an unrealistic positive self-view (Buffardi & Campbell, 2008), especially of traits, such as status, physical appearance, social popularity, and intelligence (Campbell, Rudich, & Sedikides, 2002). The most widely used Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) has been analyzed repeatedly by psychologists to delineate its multidimensional construct (Emmons, 1984, Raskin and Terry, 1988). Ackerman et al. (2011) identified a three-factor model, in which they proposed Leadership/Authority (LA), Grandiose/Exhibitionism (GE), and Entitlement/Exploitativeness (EE) as the three key factors of narcissism. The three factors differ in terms of being either adaptive or maladaptive forms of narcissism. Specifically, the LA factor (e.g., “I like having authority over people”) is regarded as an adaptive type of narcissism, marked by social boldness, optimism, and a focus on interpersonal relations with others (Brown et al., 2009, Emmons, 1984, Hickman et al., 1996). Comparatively, maladaptive forms of narcissism, including the GE factor (e.g., I like to look at myself in the mirror) and the EE factor (e.g., I find it easy to manipulate people), are characterized by an intrapersonal focus on the self, neuroticism, and a willingness to exploit others (Ackerman et al., 2011, Brown et al., 2009).

The rise in levels of narcissism among millennials (Twenge, Konrath, Foster, Campbell, & Bushman, 2008), in addition to the development of a variety of SNSs, warrants more academic research regarding the relationship between narcissism and SNS usage. Empirically, individuals high in narcissism are very active on SNSs (Ong et al., 2011), and more likely than their counterparts to display self-promotional content on their static profiles (Mehdizadeh, 2010). Nevertheless, to the authors' best knowledge, no studies have investigated the relationship between narcissism and users' self-promoting behaviors on Instagram. Thus, the current study focused on the relationship between narcissism and users' self-promoting behaviors on Instagram, profile picture-related behaviors, and general Instagram usage. Research shows that nearly half of the photos posted and shared on Instagram are categorized as “selfies” (24.2%) or self-presented photos with friends (22.4%) (Hu, Manikonda, & Kambhampati, 2014). In line with prior literature on this topic, the current study hypothesized that narcissism would be positively associated with the frequency of selfie postings (H1-a), the proportion of selfies (i.e., a self-portrait photograph that one has taken of oneself; only one human face is present in the photo) in a photo collection (H1-b), and the proportion of self-presented photos (i.e., a photograph that one has taken with others; at least two human faces are in the photo) in a photo collection (H1-c). With regard to profile pictures, it was hypothesized that individuals higher in narcissism would update their profile picture more frequently (H2-a) and evaluate their physical attractiveness in the current profile picture more positively than those lower in narcissism (H2-b). Further, it was hypothesized that narcissism scores would positively correlate with the time spent per day (H3-a), the number of photos posted (H3-b), the number of followers (H3-c), and the number of followings (H3-d) on Instagram. Finally, this study examined the relative effects of the three key components of the NPI (LA, GE, and EE) on self-promoting behaviors on Instagram.

Section snippets

Participants

An online consumer survey was conducted during a 3-week period from November to December 2014 in Korea. The sample for this study was recruited by a major research firm in Asia (Macromill Embrain) with an office in Seoul, Korea. Potential survey respondents, who were members of a virtual research panel managed by the research company, were randomly selected and notified by e-mail of the opportunity to take part in this study. All participants who completed the survey received virtual currency

Hypotheses tests

To control for the effects of age and gender, partial correlations among the variables of interest were calculated. As shown in Table 1, higher scores on the NPI-13 were positively correlated with the frequency of selfie postings (pr = 0.30, p < 0.001), the proportion of selfies (pr = 0.17, p < 0.05), and the proportion of self-presented photos (pr = 0.14, p < 0.05), supporting H1-a, b, and c. The correlations between narcissism and participants' frequency of profile picture updates (pr = 0.31, p < 0.001), and

Discussion

This study examined the relationships among narcissism and self-promoting behaviors on Instagram. Our study confirmed that more narcissistic individuals tend to post selfies and self-presented photos and update their profile picture more often as compared to less narcissistic individuals (Fox & Rooney, 2015). In addition, more narcissistic individuals rated their Instagram profile pictures as more physically attractive, lending some support to the notion that more narcissistic people are

Author disclosure statement

No competing financial interests exist.

Acknowledgement

This research was supported by the Sookmyung Women's University Research Grant (#1-1503-0065).

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