Communication

Are Facebook users narcissistic?

March 28, 2011 928

New research from Australia suggests that Facebook users are more extroverted and narcissistic than people who use the Internet but who don’t use Facebook. An article by Tom Jacobs in Miller-McCune magazine highlights some conclusions drawn by researchers about the type of personalities who are active on Facebook.

Who uses Facebook? The simple answer is a whole lot of people: The online social network has more than 600 million members.

But what sets them apart from those who use the Internet but have chosen not to play in Mark Zuckerberg’s virtual playground? New research from Australia provides some less than flattering answers.

“Facebook users tend to be more extroverted and narcissistic, but less conscientious and socially lonely, than non-users,” Tracii Ryan and Sophia Xenos of RMIT University in Melbourne write in the journal Computers in Human Behavior.

Instead of falling in love with his own image in a pond, today’s narcissist apparently gazes adoringly at his own Facebook profile.

Seeing a gap in the literature (most previous surveys of Facebook users have been limited to university students), Ryan and Xenos decided to survey a wider range of Internet users in Australia (where, they report, nearly half the population consists of active Facebook users). Their sample consisted of 1,324 participants, all between the ages of 18 and 44. All but 166 of them were Facebook users.

The participants completed a 124-question online survey, which measured such things as their “big five” personality traits (extr0version, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and openness to experience), narcissistic tendencies, shyness, loneliness, and the specifics of their Facebook usage…

Read the full article in Miller-McCune magazine.

One of Library Journal’s Best Magazines of 2008, Miller-McCune not only identifies policy issues of global important but provides evidence-based solutions offered by academic research and real-world models. Through excellent but understandable writing and proven judgment in what to cover, the nonprofit Miller-McCune has received a surprising amount of acclaim and, more importantly, a large and growing audience interested in the social and natural sciences.

View all posts by Pacific-Standard Magazine

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showler

I think that Facebook, like most things, is perfectly fine to use within moderation. It is a fantastic social networking site where you can connect with people from across the globe seamlessly; the notion is terrific. Of course abuse of it is when I feel things begin to take a turn for the worst so to speak. Facebook is to be used as a social netwrok after all, not a means to publicise your existence. I draw reference to this from David Lynch’s film Inland Empire. While Lynch never openly sggests this, my interpretation of that film is that it… Read more »

clara

facebook makes us connected to each other, but connected in different way. virtually connected but not real connection… Seeing other people with their success and how they spend their money (traveling, eating in a luxurious place — from their photograph) can create anxiety, envy, and behavior tends to show off… rather than making friends (real friends) facebook can give you a headache. If you do it just for fun… it’s oke i think…. but not addicted to it..