These days, wherever you look, people are taking selfies—on public transport, on the street, in restaurants—and as soon as they’re done, they post them on Instagram. Now researchers say that those who regularly take selfies have a distorted self-image and overestimate how attractive they are The Telegraph reports.
The number of selfies that we take has exploded in recent years. Especially in connection with Instagram, where many people are more than happy to post pictures of themselves in different contexts.
Now, researcher from the Psychology Department at the University of Toronto in Canada have published an article in “Social Psychological and Personality Science” that says that people who regularly take selfies tend to overestimate their own attractiveness.
In the study, researchers asked 198 college students (100 of whom were regular selfie-takers) to take a selfie). Then, they let someone else take a picture of them. Finally, the photos were assessed. First participants assessed how attractive and sympathetic they thought their friends would think their own picture was. Then, their pictures were assessed by 178 members of the public.
Participants who regularly take selfies and those who don’t both believed that they looked more attractive and sympathetic than the other assessors thought. But those who are accustomed to taking selfies overestimated their appearance much more, The Telegraph wrote. The selfie takers also thought that they looked better in the pictures that they themselves took than in the photos taken by others.
The external evaluators also found that those who were accustomed to taking selfies were “significantly more narcissistic” than the others.
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