U of T Study Finds People Who Take Selfies Overestimate Their Attractiveness

We all have that one friend who’s mastered the art of taking selfies.

From what angles to hold their phone, to what way to position their face, these people have selfies down to a science.

But it turns out these friends tend to overestimate how good they actually look in photos and are seen as more narcissistic by independent observers opposed to their non-selfie taking friends, according to a study by the University of Toronto.

The study, which was led by Daniel Re, compared how self-favouring bias has affected selfie-taking. For the study, Re had 198 college students, including 100 who were regular selfie-takers, and 98 who reported little or no selfie-taking, take a selfie using a smartphone camera and also had their pictures taken by an experimenter.

The participants were then asked to rate each photo based on how attractive and likeable they thought their friends would perceive them to be if the photo was shared on social media. A random group of 178 random people were then asked to determine how attractive, likeable and narcissistic they thought the people in the photos were likely to be.

Both the regular selfie-takers and the non-selfie-takers thought they would be seen as more attractive and more likeable in their photos than they were actually seen by the independent raters. However, selfie-takers significantly overestimated themselves more, especially when rating their own selfies rather than the experimenter-taken photos.

The regular selfie-takers were also recognized as looking “significantly more narcissistic” than the non-selfie-takers.

The results showed that both groups’ selfies were rated as less attractive than the experimenter-taken photos by the independent raters who also thought the selfie-takers looked significantly more narcissistic than the non-selfie-takers on the basis of their selfies.

“Selfie-takers generally overperceived the positive attributes purveyed by their selfies,” said researchers.

“Here, we found that selfie-takers believed their selfies to look more attractive and likeable than photos of them taken by other people. In reality, though, external raters actually perceived the targets’ selfies to look less attractive and less likeable than the photos taken by others (as well as more narcissistic).

So, given this information, perhaps you should reconsider adding a selfie onto social media this May long weekend.

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