If you take lots of selfies then there’s some bad news for you

A study examined 'selfie indulgence' to reveal some shocking results

SELFIES have become an ingrained part of modern life but, if you’re a selfie lover, a scientific study has revealed some bad news for you – you aren’t as attractive as you think they are.

According to a study in the Social Psychological and Personality Science journal, people who take selfies are seen as vain and narcissistic.

And that’s not all – selfie addicts also tend to have a distorted view of their own attractiveness.

Examining the perceptions of selfies and regular photos, researchers examined people’s “self-favouring biases” to reach the interesting findings.

The people studied were asked to rate the attractiveness of subjects,

including themselves, in selfies compared to photos of the same person taken by someone else.

External judges were then asked to rate attractiveness as well, to compare their findings with the subject’s own view of themselves.

The study, called ‘Selfie Indulgence’, found that selfie-takers and
non-selfie-takers are typically as narcissistic as each other.

However, the researchers did find that selfie-takers perceived themselves as more attractive and likable in their selfies than in others’ photos, whilst non-selfie-takers tend to view both types of photo equally.

The real blow for selfie lovers came from the fact that external judges rated the subjects as less attractive, less likable, and more narcissistic in their selfies than in the photos taken by others.

The researchers conclude that constant selfie-taking will stoke your ego and make you more susceptible to “self-favouring bias”, causing you to increasingly overestimate how good you look in your selfies.

Essentially, if your Facebook is littered with pouting selfies, people will think you look uglier and are less likely to warm to you.

And whilst you may prefer to upload selfies because you think you look better in them, the increased attractiveness you associate with selfies over normal photos is probably all in your head.

These findings mean that, ironically, practice taking selfies actually appears to contribute to those photos being seen more negatively.

Perhaps you should think twice before you change your profile picture to yet another pouting selfie and upload a normal picture instead.