A new study from the University of Georgia suggests that you can detect whether someone is a narcissist based on that individual's Facebook profile.
(I know, I had no idea either!)
"We found that people who are narcissistic use Facebook in a self-promoting way that can be identified by others," said lead author Laura Buffardi, a doctoral student in psychology who co-authored the study with associate professor W. Keith Campbell.
"Self-promoting? Moi?"The researchers, whose results appear in the October issue of the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, gave personality questionnaires to nearly 130 Facebook users, analyzed the content of the pages and had untrained strangers view the pages and rate their impression of the owner's narcissism.
The researchers found that the number of Facebook "friends" and wallposts that individuals have on their profile pages correlates with narcissism. Buffardi said this is consistent with how narcissists behave in the real-world, with numerous yet shallow relationships.
Yes, this should be obvious to anyone but aren't you now curious to log in and check out the profiles of your Facebook "friends" to see just how closely they fit the profile of a narcissist? Or maybe you already knew it and are just using them to get on a guest list.
I for one wouldn't dream of using social networks or blog sites for shameless self-promotion.
What I would like to know is: what does having a photo of my cat for a Facebook profile pic say about my personality?
[Via Physorg]
