Researchers at the University of Georgia have concluded there are lots of narcissists on Facebook, and you probably know one—or several. How do you know if your friend is a narcissist? According to the study, count the number of contacts he maintains, as well as the number of wall posts.
Are there a lot of them? While you’re at it, check for palm hair and sudden episodes of blindness. This person loves himself. A lot.
Sound a bit presumptuous? Maybe, but now we’ve got a study to back up our book-by-its-cover conclusions, and according to a set of “untrained strangers,” they know one when they see one.
“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. The results will appear in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
Buffardi told Murdok that the study dealt with “trait narcissism,” not narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), which is related to antisocial personality disorder. This means that narcissism is considered a normal personality trait, which can sometimes be positive or even healthy, but can also be destructive. For the purposes of the study, narcissists were defined by having “high narcissism scores” based on standard measures. 
“High narcissism scores are also associated with positive and inflated self-views of traits like intelligence, power, and physical attractiveness as well as a pervasive sense of uniqueness and entitlement,” she said. “Research has shown both positive and negative outcomes are associated with this trait.”
The researchers had 130 Facebook users fill out personality questionnaires and analyzed their responses, and then had untrained strangers view the pages before rating their impression of the Facebook user’s narcissism. These observers were given a list of about 30 personality characteristics to choose from.
The two researchers concluded that the observers, while not perfect, were “somewhat accurate in their judgments” of who was narcissistic and who wasn’t. They also concluded behavior exhibited by identified Facebook narcissists was consistent with how narcissists would behave in the real world: maintaining numerous shallow relationships and using people for their own advantage.
Interestingly, the observers making judgments used fairly superficial means of identifying narcissists, focusing on three characteristics: quantity of social interaction, attractiveness of the individual, and the degree of self promotion in the main photo.
The conclusion was that a narcissist would be more likely to use “glamorous, self-promoting pictures” for their main profile photos, while others are more likely to use snapshots. So the moral, one supposes, is when setting up your profile, don’t try to be too pretty—people will think you’re stuck on yourself.
Narcissists also tend to have more contacts on Facebook, and because of that, any given Facebook user is likely to have more narcissist friends online than they would in the real world.
The researchers said narcissism was a trait of interest because it hampers a person’s ability to form long-term relationships. Along with that is the need to look at how social networking allows these traits to play out online.
“Nearly all of our students use Facebook, and it seems to be a normal part of people’s social interactions,” said Campbell. “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.”
The study doesn’t appear to address legitimate reasons for self-promotion, like modeling, acting, business, or other careers or situations a person might acceptably promote themselves.
