Facebook a fertile ground for narcissists, shocka

THE UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA has devised a study to use social not-working sites like Facebook to test for Narcissism.

Polling about 130 Facebook users, the study asked participants to look at strangers’ profile pages and rate them on a scale of how narcissistic they came across.

The results, published next month in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, show that even non experts can easily pick out the not-working narcissists a mile away.

Users with excessive numbers of ‘friends’, wallposts, comments and who posted only the most glamorous profile pictures of themselves, displayed similar behaviour to how narcissists act in the real world. Self obsessed and shallow.

And with over 100 million facebook users, most of them teens, there’s certainly plenty of study material out there.

Associate professor W. Keith Campbell, who co-authored the study with doctoral student in psychology, Laura Buffardi, noted "It just turns out that narcissists are using Facebook the same way they use their other relationships – for self promotion with an emphasis on quantity of over quality."

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to finish this article and go see if anyone left me a comment on my new status. µ

L’Inq
University of Georgia