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Narcissists Are More Likely To Follow Other Narcissists Back On Instagram

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Dami Olonisakin

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 Dobo Kristian/Shutterstock

Instagram, the popular social media platform, is used for numerous reasons. Many use it to store memories with loved ones, others to promote businesses, and some use it to share their epic adventures with family and friends. Then there are some who share posts on Instagram because they can’t get enough of their own constant selfies.

The scientific journal Computers In Human Behavior shared one of their latest studies, which looked at whether or not narcissists are more accepting of other narcissistic traits in people.

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The authors looked at 276 people and noticed that those who uploaded selfies and groupies were seen as more narcissistic than those who did not.

"Posting selfies is a popular activity that exemplifies narcissistic self-promotion on Instagram," Seunga Venus Jin, from Sejong University, said to PsyPost.

What’s more, the team noticed that selfie-posting Intagrammers were highly likely to follow other narcissists back on Instagram, especially if they posted similar content.

“Selfies and groupies are interpreted as more negatively narcissistic than photos taken by others and neutral photos,” added Venus. “However, narcissistic personality similarity between the selfie poster and viewer mediates this effect."

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The research team focused primarily on “grandiose narcissism”, which refers to having an inflated opinion of oneself and being over-confident. However, there is also another type of narcissism (that was not studied) called “vulnerable narcissism”, which involves feeling insecure and withdrawn.

In a report last year, LendEDU found that 78 percent of university students admitted to knowing someone who would delete their posts if they didn’t gain a substantial amount of likes on Instagram or Facebook. This highlighted the importance some placed on social media engagement, adding to the latest study's theory on social media behavior among Instagram users as a whole

The LendEDU research also showed that 64 percent of people saw Instagram as the most "narcissistic" social media platform. Surprise.

But what was also interesting was that it didn't actually matter whether or not other Instagrammers genuinely liked a photo (ie. liking a photo just to get return likes). All that users truly cared about was receiving a burst of orange notifications signaling likes. Social media ey?


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