People Who Post Selfies Seen as Less Likable

“In a Washington State University study that will publish this fall in the Journal of Research in Personality, individuals who posted a lot of selfies were almost uniformly viewed as less likable, less successful and more insecure than people who posted more ‘posies’--that is, traditionally posed photos that appear to be taken by someone else. WSU psychology professor Chris Barry worked with WSU students, as well as collaborators from the University of Southern Mississippi, to design a project intended to measure judgments of pictures posted on Instagram. Across the board, the study found that people who posted more selfies were viewed to have lower self-esteem and to be more lonely, less dependable and less successful than those who posted more ‘posies,’ Barry said in a phone interview Thursday. ‘Even when two feeds had similar content, such as depictions of achievement or travel, feelings about the person who posted selfies were negative and feelings about the person who posted posies were positive,’ he said. A better solution, though, might be to stop being concerned about social media at all. ‘It can be very hard when we get focused on number of likes or how many followers we have or the number of interactions,’ said Keely Kolmes, a San Francisco-based psychologist with expertise in social media matters. Kolmes recommends people unplug once in a while and engage with the world around us instead.”

​“People who post,” The Seattle Times, Aug. 30, 2019

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