Short CommunicationThe role of narcissism in self-promotion 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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