CC BY
44ПСИХОЛОГИЯ
УДК 159
Б01: 10.21779/2542-0313- 2017-32-3-86-93 А.М. Туркмен
Влияние селфи на психологию молодежи
Бакинский государственный университет; Азербайджан, AZ1148, Баку, ул. З. Халилов, 23; sinerji 52@hotmail.com
Люди день за днем все больше используют селфи, но почему? Мы не так много знаем об этом. Исследования показывают, что существует связь между селфи и личностью человека. Но в истолковании этих отношений среди исследователей нет единого мнения. Люди используют селфи по многим причинам, но есть и психологический аспект, и мы очень мало знаем об этом. Существует взаимосвязь между самооценкой и количеством производимых селфи и совместного использования его. Исследование связано с указанной проблемой. В проведенном исследовании участвовало 68 респондентов, половина из которых - мужчины. Каждый из них выполнил тесты, включая демографические показатели, вопросы по селфи и шкалу самооценки Ро-зенберга. По итогам исследования мы узнали, что люди, у которых гораздо больше самоуважения, делают больше селфи. Люди с высокой самооценкой обмениваются селфи гораздо чаще, чем другие. А люди, которые не имеют высокого чувства собственного достоинства, делают намного меньше снимков селфи. Исследователи выявили, что люди пытаются повысить свою самооценку с помощью совместного использования селфи.
Ключевые слова: селфи как способ самовыражения, психология личности, фотографирование, общение, эгоизм.
Introduction
The article is a content analysis of what we, social media, have revealed - eight types of social media photos. This includes self-portraits, friends, activities, captioned photos (pictures with embedded text), food, gadgets, fashion, and pets, where the first six types are much more popular (Hu, Manikonda, & Kambhampati, 2014). The current study was focused particularly on a selfportrait category which consists of selfies.
Taking pictures of ourselves, which are called selfies, has become very popular. According to the definition given in online Oxford English Dictionary (2014), selfie is "a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smart phone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website". In 2012, the word was named by Time Magazine as one of the twelve new, breakthrough words, and it was voted a word of the year by the Oxford English Dictionary in 2013. The use of the word rose 17,000 percent in 2013, according to the dictionary (Fausing, 2014). We live in the age of selfie. We share our quick self-portraits on social networks which offer a new opportunity for immediate visual statement of who we are, what we are doing, who we think we are, and who we feel we are. Selfies have changed the aspects of social interaction, body language, self-consciousness, privacy, humor, irony, sense of time, and public behavior. The popularity of selfies is tremendous, there is a website called
Selfeed on which one can observe new selfies with the selfie hashtag uploaded by social media users in real time every second (Madsen, Carter, & Mayer, 2014).
Selfies are now no longer just something young people do. Even the American President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden are on it (Zezima, 2014).The selfie, taken by Bradley Cooper on behalf of Oscars' host Ellen De Generes, is now the most retweeted image of all times, garthering more than one million retweets in just 45 minutes (Fisher, 2014). Many people have seen or taken a mirror selfie, so the marketing agency iStrategy Labs invented a mirror, called S.E.L.F.I.E. (Self Enhancing Live Feed Image Engine), which takes selfies for you. The S.E.L.F.I.E. not only takes your photo, but also posts the image to your Twitter feed (Kolodny, 2014).
Some people seem to be obsessed with selfies. For instance, a British male teenager who became addicted to selfies and took almost 200 photos a day, attempted to commit suicide when he failed to take a perfect selfie (Robinson, 2014). There are numerous articles, pop songs and YouTube videos devoted to selfies and tips on how to get a perfect selfie. Social media is dazzled with selfies. Different people may have different attitude towards selfies. Some love them, some hate them, but they are still tremendously popular. Thus, it is of great importance to find if apprehensive individuals take selfies because of the perceived ability to control their image.
Effects of Selfie practice on Personality Traits
As stated, there is a shortage of scientific writing on the factors that influence selfie taking and sharing. While certain facets of selfie-sharing mentality can be intuited and logically inferred by armchair philosophers, the suppositions made by Sheth and Solomon (2014) and Shipley (2015) remain intriguing conjecture until empirically substantiated. Much of the research done throughout 2015 focused on the correlation between selfie posting and narcissism. It follows that the majority of scientific writing about selfies to date focuses on this aspect of personality. Sorokowski et al. (2015) found that females report posting more selfies than males, but that males' overall narcissism scores predict selfie posting more than females' scores. Fox and Rooney (2015) suggest that narcissism and psychopathy predict selfie posting frequency, adding that narcissism and self-objectification predict the editing of photos prior to posting. In other words, narcissistic individuals are significantly more likely to employ cropping, filtering, and enhancement tools than non-narcissistic individuals. Weiser (2015) examined three dimensions of narcissism as predictors of selfie-posting frequency: leadership/authority (LA), grandiose exhibitionism (GE), and entitlement/ exploitativeness (EE). In general terms, LA is defined by self-perceptions of leadership and dominance, GE denotes self-absorption and vanity, and EE reflects a willingness to exploit others and a belief about oneself as being entitled to excessive amounts of respect and attention. Weiser recruited 1,204 United States residents, who were each given questionnaires pertaining to narcissism, selfie-posting frequency, and total amount of time spent on social media. Weiser found that males score higher on each of the three dimensions of narcissism, but in line with Sorokowski et al.'s (2015) findings females report higher prevalence of selfie posting. Leadership/authority and GE were found to predict selfie posting, but EE was not. This tracks logically: leaders and exhibitionists are prone to attention-seeking, whereas exploitative people may not have much to gain on this level. Age was not a moderator. The discrepancy between males' higher narcissism scores and females' higher prevalence of selfie posting suggests that other factors, such as extraversion and self-esteem, also play an important role.
This relationship was explored by Barry et al. (2015), who likewise assessed narcissism, but also introduced a self-esteem scale. In a contradictory result, Barry et al. found a general
lack of association between narcissism, self-esteem, and selfie-posting. Rather, overall size of a person's friend list appeared to most closely predict selfie-posting frequency. Specifically, the more online friends someone has, the more likely they are to share images of them-selves.Sorokowska et al. (2016) replicated the self-esteem component of Barry et al.'s study, but also introduced measures pertaining to extraversion and social exhibitionism, an individual's propensity for showing off or calling attention to oneself in social situations, respectively. Again, self-esteem did not significantly predict selfie sharing for either males or females, although extraversion and social exhibitionism were positively correlated with number of selfies for both males and females. In addition to the aforementioned personality variables, Sorokow-ski et al. (2016) have also recently tested the hypothesis that histrionic personality, defined by constant attention seeking, emotional overreaction, and suggestibility, predicts the number of selfies shared to SNS. As with measures of narcissism, histrionic traits predicted number of posted selfies for males but not females, although females were still shown to post more selfies than males.
Though self-esteem has not been shown to influence selfie posting behavior, a recent study by Burrow and Rainone (2016) posits that purpose in life (a contributing factor to self esteem and need for assurance) moderates the degree to which people seek attention and validation on SNS, and may manifest itself in the form of histrionic personality traits. It is given that individuals driven by strong personal goals and motivations (i. e., those high in purpose) are less influenced by the evaluations of others than those who are not (Guay, Delisle, & Fernet, 2008) and that inclusion, attention, and acknowledgement are primary motivations to use SNS (Stefanone, Lackaff, & Rosen, 2011), it follows that low-purpose individuals may be more likely to engage in selfie sharing behavior. This connection, as well as the relationship between purpose, narcissism, and extraversion, has not yet been investigated.
Coupled with the knowledge that narcissists' tendency to self-objectify causes them to manipulate selfies to a greater extent prior to posting (Fox & Rooney, 2015), that they consistently post photos of themselves that specifically emphasize attractiveness (Kapidzik, 2013), and that SNS users in general, and high attention and approval-seeking users in particular, carefully manipulate self-presentation and impression management on SNS (Lang & Barton, 2015), it may be inferred that users taking selfies with the intention of sharing them online will take multiple drafts of the same image before selecting the best or most attractive image to upload. This is consistent with basic digital photography technique, which holds that the best version of an image is obtained by taking multiple shots of the same subject, sometimes from different angles and perspectives (Moore, 2015). The construct of drafts in relation to selfie photography has, to date, not been examined in psychological literature.
Theory surrounding selfie editing and manipulation remains underdeveloped. Chua and Chang (2016) interviewed two dozen schoolgirls in Singapore, who confirmed that selfies often serve as a measure of their peers' conception of beauty and that the number of likes, passive votes of approval from other SNS users on a person's friend list, represents a quantitative measure of peer approval. In this light, selfies edited to enhance or improve one's personal appearance may be seen not as a product of narcissism, but of conformity and approval-seeking.The irony, as pointed out by Qiu, Lu, Yang, Qu, and Zhu (2015), is that non-acquaintances may not necessarily be sound judges of the characteristics they witness when viewing selfies. While it can be assumed that online friends whom the SNS user also knows offline have real-life experiences from which to draw upon when regarding the subject of a selfie, Qiu et al. found that only the subject's openness could be accurately identified by a stranger.
Impact of Selfies on Self-Esteem Levels
Selfies are a double-edged sword. For some people, posting selfies is a selfconfidence booster, and for others, selfies are the reason that makes them feel bad about their lives and having insecurities about their appearances. According to Murphy-Gill (2014), most teenagers spend considerably more time and money to look attractive to others and consequently, boost their self-esteem. A selfie generation female teenager says, "what you look like is what's defining you. It's like you're defined by how pretty you are. This is me because this is what I look like (Murphy-Gill, 2014)". Further, the Today/AOL Body Image survey indicated that about 55 percent of girls and 34 percent of teen boys feel that social media makes them feel more self-conscious about their appearance. About 58 percent teen girls say, "seeing pictures of other people living glamorous-looking lives on social media makes me feel bad about myself". Compared to girls, only 19 percent of teen boys had the same reaction (Dahl, 2014).
According to a research published in Computers in Human Behavior, selfies are meant to attract attention and they might also give others an insight into one's personality (Bushak, 2015). In a research study conducted at Lin Qiu of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, researchers analyzed 123 selfie-taking participants. All the participants used a popular Chinese microblogging website, Sina Weibo. The results of the study indicated that a person's selfie depends on that person's personality (Qiu, Lu, Yang, Qu, & Zhu, 2015). §ener et al., individuals feeling that they have explored new freedom areas by means of these interfaces reinforce the new type of publicity, of which they have become a part, with the motivation of that feeling. As well as the communication based on visual sharings like pictures, photos, videos, films; the text-based communication like blogs, microblogs, forums, dictionaries and chat rooms, and the open ends of the renewed time and space feeling produce bodies and identities that are either alternative or proponent to sovereign representation styles (§ener et al., 2013).
A study found out that some of those who post their selfies on social media use selfies as self-esteem booster (Grabmeier, 2015). People control how they are portrayed in their social network profile and hence they were able to increase their self-esteem momentarily (Gonzales & Hancock, 2011). Although selfies enhance a person's self-esteem, its increased use was found to decrease life satisfaction (Wilcox & Stephen, 2013).
Methodology
The purpose of this quantitative study is to identify the relationship between self esteem levels and the number of selfies people take and post, and the uses and gratifications of taking selfies.
Research Questions
The following research questions guided the study.
RQ1: Who takes more selfies, people with lower or higher self-esteem?
RQ2: Who posts more selfies, people with lower or higher self-esteem?
RQ3: Why do people take or post selfies?
Data Collection Procedure
A target population of 68 students between the ages of 18-24 years old were surveyed using the online survey tool, Survey Monkey. To collect data using Survey Monkey, the researcher visited six classes, made a short presentation about the study, and then provided students with the link to the survey.
RESULTS
The research variables were analyzed by illustrative statistics that includes means and standard deviation. To learn if there is a correlation between the variables, and the Pivot-Table along with a Chi Square test, the variables were analyzed by statistical tests. The data analysis helped a lot to research. It simplified the research questions. First question in the research was the relationship between taking selfies and self respect. Research shows that on the average people who have low self respect takes 6.61 selfies, normals take 7.95 selfies and the people who show great respect to themselves take 8.15 selfies.
The results in the second question of research shows that on the average people with low self respect shares 0.88 selfies, normals share 1.36 selfies and the highest ones share 2.03 selfies.We undestand from the research that people with self respect share selfies two times more than with the lowest ones. Researchers asked subscribers to explain why they take selfies and gave them options: 1) people's likes make me happy; 2) people's comments make me happy; 3) it is good for fun and everybody uses it; 4) I don't; 5) to increase my self confidence; 6) to spend time; 7) showing my great self; 8) showing my style; 9) showing my success; 10) other reasons.
In the end of research we have learned that 33 % of subscribers do not have any reason for using selfies, 18% of them have personal reasons, 15% of them find it funny, 10% of them try to increase self confidence, 6.3% of them show their greatness, 4.6 % of them spend time, 4.38 % like being liked, 2.73% like taking comments, also 3% of them try to show their style and 0.82 % use it because everyone uses. And we understand that many subscribers do not have any reason to use selfies but some try to increase their self confidence.
CONCLUSION
Andy Warhol, a popular culture icon, once said that everone will be famous for 15 min in the future. Selfies make people famous for themselves. Selfies actually are not real self but it has a connection between self. Getting liked and taking comments are good for people. They feel that way. Actually selfie users take it really serious they are serious about comments, likes, sharing posts. They give importance to it and they try to make a new self. In the research there were more males than females in the age of 18-24. Research included many people with many differentaties. And we learnt people with low self confidence take 6 selfies in a week while high ones take 8 selfies. When people get afraid of not being liked, not taking positive feedback maybe they share less selfies. It is a conlusion of the research. In a week low self confidence people share 0.88 selfies while high self confidence people share 2. Maybe those who share selfies more, have need for other's attention. Maybe they give too much importance to other's feedbacks. And this situation leads to narcissistic behaviours. Also we learn from the study that people with low self confidence choosing selfies try to increase their self confidence. In the future there will be a research on larger number of people to see if the results are the same. And there will be a research about the relation between selfies and self confidence. Researcher's primary aim is to find out if the selfies have a positive influence on self confidence.
REFERENCES
1. Barry C.T., Doucette H., Loflin D.C., Rivera-Hudson N. & Herrington L.L. (2015). "Let me take a selfie": Associations between self-photography, narcissism, and self-esteem. Psychology of Popular Media Culture. Advance online publication. doi:10.1037/ ppm0000089.
2. Burrow A.L. & Rainone N. (2016). How many likes did I get? Purpose moderates links between positive social media feedback and self-esteem. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. Advance online publication. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2016.09.005.
3. Bushak L. (2015, August 18). Selfies can reveal personality traits: What your duck-face says about you. Medical Daily. Retrieved from http://www.medicaldaily.com
4. Carol. (2013). How do selfies impact self-esteem? Retrieved from http://dr car-ol.com/2013/12/05/.
5. Chua T.H.H. & Chang L. (2016). Follow me and like my beautiful selfies: Singapore teenage girls' engagement in self-presentation and peer comparison on social media. Computers in Human Behavior, 55 (1), 190-197. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2015.09.011.
6. Dahl M. (2014, February 26). Selfie-esteem: Teens say selfies give a confidence boost. Today. Retrieved from http://www.today.com.
7. Fausing B. (2014). Selfies Shape the World. On Selfies, Healthies, Usies, Felfies... Scribd. Retrieved from http://www.scribd.com/.
8. Fisher L. (2014). Ellen's Oscar selfie most retweeted tweet ever. ABC News. Retrieved from http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/.
9. Fox J. & Rooney M.C. (2015). The Dark Triad and trait self-objectification as predictors of men's use and self-presentation behaviors on social networking sites. Personality and Individual Differences, 76 (1), 161-165. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2014.12.017.
10. Grabmeier J. (2015). Hey, guys: posting a lot of selfies doesn't send a good message. Retrieved from http://news.osu.edu/news
11. Gonzales A.L. & Hancock J.T. (2011). Mirror, mirror on my Facebook wall: Effects of Facebook exposure on self-esteem. Cyberpsychology, Behavavior, and Social Networking, 14, 79-83.
12. Guay F., Delisle M.N. & Fernet C. (2008). Does task-related identified regulation moderate the sociometer effect? A study of performance feedback, perceived inclusion, and state self-esteem. Social Behavior and Personality, 36 (2), 239-254. doi: 10.2224/ sbp.2008.36.2.239
13. Hu Y., Manikonda L. & Kambhampati S. (2014). What we instagram: A first analysis of instagram photo content and user types. Proc. AAAI ICWSM.
14. Kapidzik S. (2013). Narcissism as a predictor of motivations behind Facebook profile picture selection. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 16 (1), 14-19. doi:10.1089/cyber.2012.0143.
15. Kolodny C. (2014). This Mirror Will Take Your Selfies For You. The Huffington Post. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.
16. Lang C. & Barton H. (2015). Just untag it: Exploring the management of undesirable Facebook photos. Computers in Human Behavior, 43(1), 147-155. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2014.10.051.
17. Madsen T., Carter E. & Mayer J. (2014). Selfeed. Real-time updates of the #selfie tag on Instagram. Retrieved from http://selfeed.com/.
18. Moore P. (2015, February 6). 12 mobile photography tips every photographer should know [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://iphonephotographyschool.com/.
19. Murphy-GillM. (2014). Selfie esteem. U.S. Catholic, 79 (9), 16-21.
20. Quote Investigator. (2012). Andy Warhol quotes. Retrieved from http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/04/famous-15-minutes/.
21. Qiu L., Lu J., Yang S., Qu W., & Zhu T. (2015). What does your selfie say about you? Computers in Human Behavior, 52, 443-449. Retrieved from http://ntu.edu.sg/home/linqiu/publications/selfie.pdf.
22. Robinson W. (2014, March 25). Selfies almost killed me: Schoolboy who took 200 photos of himself every day because he wanted perfection describes how addiction drove him to attempt suicide. The Daily Mail // Retrieved from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-
23. Rutledge P. (2013). Making sense of selfies. //Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/.
24. Selfie (2014). In Oxford English Dictionary online. Retrieved from http://www.oed.com/.
25. Sheth J.N. & Solomon M.R (2014). Extending the extended self in a digital world. The Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice, 22(2), 123-132. doi:10.2753/mtp10696679220201.
26. Shipley J.W. (2015). Selfie love: Public lives in an era of celebrity pleasure, violence, and social media. American Anthropologist, 117(2), 403-413. doi:10.1111/aman.12247.
27. Sorokowska A., Oleszkiewicz A., Frackowiak T., Pisanski K., Chimel A. & Sorokowski P. (2016). Selfies and personality: Who posts self-portrait photographs? Personality and Individual Differences, 90 (1), 119-123. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2015.10.037
28. Sorokowski P., Sorokowska A., Oleszkiewicz A., Frackowiak T., Huk A. & Pisanski K. (2015). Selfie posting behaviors are associated with narcissism among men. Personality and Individual Differences, 85 (1), 123-127. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2015.05.004
29. Sorokowski P., Sorokowska A., Frackowiak T., Karwowski M., Rusicka I. & Oleszkiewicz A. (2016). Sex differences in online selfie posting behaviors predict histrionic personality scores among men but not women. Computers in Human Behavior, 59(1), 368373. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2016.02.033.
30. Stefanone M.A., Lackaff D. & Rosen D. (2011). Contingencies of self-worth and socialnetworking-site behavior. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 14 (1), 4149. doi:10.1089/cyber.2010.0049.
31. §ener G. ve Ozkogak Y. (2013). "Sosyal Aglarda Gorunur Olmak: Facebook Fotograflarinda Bireyin Kendini Sunum Stratejileri", Sosyal Medya ve Ag Toplumu-2, Kultur, Kimlik, Siyaset i^nde, Can Bilgili ve Gulum §ener (Ed.), istanbul: Beslenme Saati Kitaplari, 121154.
32. Weiser E.B. (2015). #me: Narcissism and its facets as predictors of selfie-posting frequency. Personality and Individual Differences, 86 (1), 477-481. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2015.07.007.
33. Wilcox K. & Stephen A.T. (2013). Are close friends the enemy? Online social networks, self-esteem, and self-control. Journal of Consumer Research, 40. doi:10.1086/668794.
34. Zezima K. (2014). Barack Obama and Joe Biden took a selfie today. Yes, for real. The Washington Post. Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/.
Поступила в редакцию 22 сентября 2017 г.
UDC 159
DOI: 10.21779/2542-0313- 2017-32-3-86-93
Selfie affect on the psychology of young individuals A.M. Turkmen
Baku State University; Azerbaijan, AZ1148, Baku, Z. Khalilov 23; sinerji 52@hotmail.com
People take selfies more and more every day. Why? We know little about it. Researches show there is connection between selfies and human's personality though in interpreting these relations there is no consensus among researchers. People take selfies for many reasons but there is also a psychological aspect that is not known to us. There is a connection between a person's self-esteem and the number of taking and sharing selfies. The study involved 68 respondents, half of whom were men. Every subscriber completed the tests including demographic scale, the Selfie questionnaire and Rosenberg's self-assessment scale. According to the results of the study, we learned that people, who have much more self-respect, make more selfies. People with high self -respect share selfies much more often than others. And people who don't have self-respect share only a few selfies. The researchers found that people try to increase their self-respect by means of sharing selfies.
Keywords: self as a way of self-expression, personality psychology, photography, communication, selfishness.
Received 22 September, 2017
