Earlier this week, I wrote a post about the Single Question Narcissism Inventory, which basically asks a person if they are narcissistic and trusts their answer. I wrote about how, in my own research, I'm interested in analyzing social media to determine if people are, in fact, narcissistic.
In response, lots of you shared interesting (and sometimes scary) stories of narcissistic people you know and what they have done. As I've mulled over those comments and emails this week, I thought it would be interesting to gather up some of the best stories of online narcissism and discuss them in a future post.
This post is my request to you, dear readers, for your stories. What are some of the most narcissistic things you have seen people do online? Your stories can come from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram – any social media site you like! Bonus points if it can be shared with a screen shot of what the narcissist posted*.
Don't worry - if I use something you shared, I will blur out any names and photos so the example will be anonymous. You can send me anonymized stories, too. Also, I won't be using any of this for my academic research. Everyone at my university operates under strict ethics board guidelines. I haven't sought or received approval for this kind of data collection and thus I can't use it in research even if I wanted to. So you can be confident that you won't be subjecting your friends, exes, or yourself to any research or analysis by sharing with me.
You can send your stories and screen shots over email to jgolbeck@umd.edu. Please put "Narcissism" in the subject line so I don't accidentally miss your message.
And remember - it's not just the current obsession with #selfies that indicates people are narcissistic. There are seven components of narcissism, and great examples of any of those will be much appreciated:
- Authority, which deals with leadership skills and someone's interest in holding power (often for the sake of having power – think Frank Underwood from House of Cards)
- Entitlement, which measures a person's expectation that they be given things they think they "deserve"
- Exhibitionism, or how much someone likes to be the center of attention
- Exploitativeness, describing how much a person will take advantage of others to get what he wants
- Self-sufficiency, or how much you rely on others vs. yourself (one of the more positive elements of narcissism)
- Superiority, a person's feeling of being better than those around them
- Vanity, which centers around physical attractiveness, especially a belief in one's own attractiveness
Next Monday, I will take a couple good examples from each of these categories and share them so we can have a discussion about how social media affects narcissism and how you can decide if and how to respond to it.
Thanks in advance - I'm looking forward to seeing all you have to share!
*If you want to take a screen shot, but don't know how, here's a link that will give you instructions: http://www.take-a-screenshot.org