Narcissism and Facebook, are we surprised?
A study on Facebook and narcissism conducted at the University of Georgia was published in this month’s issue of the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (which coincidentally was the first journal I ever subscribed to).
“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.
It seems that everyone is always joking that Blogging/Twittering/Facebooking is about as narcissistic an act as we can think of, but apparently it can get clinical.
“bleedin obvious,” writes one commenter on Physorg’s site. But whether obvious or not, it still is worth investigating.
“We’ve undergone a social change in the last four or five years and now almost every student manages their relationships through Facebook – something that few older people do,” Campbell said. “It’s a completely new social world that we’re just beginning to understand.”
I just have one question: If narcissism is when an individual “has an excessive need for admiration and affirmation” (thanks Wikipedia), then how does narcissism behave in asynchronous forms communication on the web such as Facebook?
(thanks Katie for the link!)
October 15th, 2008 at 8:53 am
I wondered about the asynchronous aspect of narcissism as well, but when I thought about it I realized there are some people who post things that seem designed to elicit a response. Most tellingly, some people put emotional or personal statements in their “What are you doing now?” I have found that they tend to be the same people I would consider narcissistic in personal interactions. So I believe they use Facebook as a way to broadcast their need for attention and to “guilt” their friends into feeling as though they need to respond to every new drama in their lives …
October 16th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
Dude, check this article out, as well. I think that the folks in Georgia who did this study might be overusing the ‘n’ word. Just a thought:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/20/fashion/20narcissist.html?scp=4&sq=narcissism&st=cse
October 16th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
thanks for the article juliet. reading it, and jed’s post made me think of this article from a while back: http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-age-of-egocasting
…facebook offers us as way to perform “egocasting”; it enables us to manipulate how we “consume”/experience our social relationships like the media on an ipod or tivo (e.g. “collect” friends like you collect mp3s and “play” or message them when you want). once someone has accepted your friend request, you receive a degree of affirmation from that individual, and that can be even more of a boost depending on who you requested as a friend; there are varying degrees of affirmation that can fuel narcissistic tendencies based on the individual’s understanding of a person’s social capital (think of the feeling a high schooler gets when their “reach” university accepts their application versus an acceptance from a “safety” school). i believe the scenario can also work the same in reverse, i.e. receiving friend requests. …think of the power an individual can feel in denying a friend request (rosen’s “selective avoidance”) for reasons related to the requestor’s social capital. this demonstration of agency could also feed a narcissist personality.
just focusing on the mechanisms of friending people on facebook alone puts the individual in a position where they technically have to relate to their social world as something distinct from them; they literally construct their social world online by the friends they choose (hmm…isn’t there something about picking noses here…). ; ) anyway, the ny times drawing from juliet’s article is great: http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2008/07/20/fashion/20narcissist.1.ready.html. people/our relationships become “stuff” that resides within the “my stuff” and “stuff about me” regions…i think in the past we would put friends in a “stuff about me” place, but now with the individual agency inherit in facebook technology, i would argue friends become more like objects to acquire; they become “my stuff.”
…once the object has been collected and the initial affirmation from the friend acceptance has lost its sparkle, facebook has plenty of mechanisms by which the thrill of affirmation/admiration can be experienced (wall writing, superpoke, gifts, etc.). however, the technology of facebook changes the rules of the game for the narcissist; facebook’s highly visible, public nature can expose to the narcissist the very “fantasy” that is their own delusions of grandeur. if they aren’t getting superpoked or people don’t respond to their “witty” wall postings, then i would imagine the narcissist might see the light. or, perhaps they would let their facebook profile grow stale, telling friends “offline” that perhaps it was just “too much of a time sink” to their “busy, important and real work.” maybe facebook isn’t filled with a bunch of narcissists at all…maybe just a majority of people that want some degree of recognition and sheepishly join in the “oh how horribly narcissistic i am” for facebooking, twittering, etc. joke/conversation just because they want to believe they belong. to something.
(p.s. i think we have notably evolved socially since freud et al, and just need a new clinical definition for narcissism, if it is to remain a relevant psychological disorder; as quoted above, “we’ve undergone a social change in the last four or five years and now almost every student manages their relationships through facebook – something that few older people do.” )
October 20th, 2008 at 9:59 am
my ex has narcissistic personality disorder. i find it revealing that i have yet to see him on facebook. could be he’s just blocked me altogether, but the transparency and interconnectedness of facebook is not compatible with the kind of lying, firewalling and secrecy that this particular narcissist has constructed. i’m guessing that he hasn’t yet figured out how to manage the likelihood that two people who believe two different (perhaps overlapping, perhaps contradictory) sets of lies about him should meet and converse freely. But since he can’t live without a constant stream of news, technology or admiration, i imagine he’ll eventually find a way.
February 17th, 2010 at 6:20 am
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August 5th, 2010 at 3:39 am
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October 13th, 2010 at 5:42 am
i dont think so its narcissistic, maybe its histrionic.. attention seeking..lol
November 9th, 2010 at 11:22 am
Thanks for sharing, top tips!!