Study: 'Selfie-Takers' Overestimate Their Attractiveness
By Chelsea Lacey-Mabe
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- A new study suggests "selfie-takers" tend to overestimate their attractiveness.
A team of psychologists headed by Daniel Re from the University of Toronto looked at 198 college students -- 100 of them took selfies regularly, while the other 98 reported little to no selfie taking. All of the students were told to take a selfie with their smartphone and an additional photo was taken of the students by one of the experimenters.
Next, the students rated the photos on how their friends might perceive the pictures of them on social media. Once they were posted on the internet, independent raters scored the photos for attractiveness, likability and narcissism.
Both groups though rated themselves higher than the independent raters. The known "selfie-takers" rated their selfies in particular higher than pictures of them taken by the experimenter.
The findings, published in Social Psychological and Personality Science, suggest that people who take more selfies than the average person, perceive themselves to be more well-liked than they really are.
The independent observers however found the "selfie-takers" to be more narcissistic.
This adds to the theory that a "self-favoring bias" is greater when the subject has more control over their own image and can take multiple pictures of themselves at different angles or from a different side before posting "the perfect one" on social media.