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| Patrick Bateman, from American Psycho, would've loved selfies. |
Perfectly sculpted, ab-bearing, gel-coiffed dudes oversharing their selfies on Instagram is
annoying and lame, but recently published scientific research suggests
that it might point to something far more sinister than being a
mirror-addicted loser. Put it this way: if Patrick Bateman had an iPhone
6 and an
Tinder account, his profile pic would be probably be a selfie.
Researchers at Ohio State University examined 1000 men aged 18-40 and
discovered that those who regularly post images of themselves across
social networking sites are more likely to score highly on psychopath
tests.
The study, published in
Personality and Individual Differences, examined the
dark triad of
three pathological personality traits: narcissism, Machiavellianism,
and psychopathy. According to the researchers, this triumvirate of
negativity all "share common threads of deceitfulness, self-promotion,
coldness, disagreeableness, exploitation, and aggression".
Guys who post a lot of pictures of themselves scored higher on
measures of narcissm and psychopathy. This doesn't mean that every
selfie obsessive is necessarily a psycho – it just means they
exhibit higher than average levels of these anti-social traits. So swipe
right with caution.
Lead researcher Jesse Fox told
Ohio State News:
"It’s not surprising that men who post a lot of selfies and spend more
time editing them are more narcissistic, but this is the first time it
has actually been confirmed in a study. The more interesting finding is
that they also score higher on this other anti-social personality trait,
psychopathy, and are more prone to self-objectification."
Fox says she's in the middle of follow up research that is proving
that women who post a lot of selfies score higher on psychopathy and
narcissism tests. She says that because we all spend so much time on
Instagram and Facebook, we're beginning to self-define through
appearance more and more.
So there you have it, our generation is just one million reflections of psychopathy.
