OHIO STATE STUDY OF 800 MEN LINKED SELFIES TO PSYCHOPATHY
An Ohio State selfie study of 800 men linked posting lots of selfies to narcissism and psychopathy.
Ohio State University announced the findings on January 6, 2015. Authors Jesse Fox and Margaret C. Rooney had U.S. men complete an online survey about their social-media habits, including how often they posted photos and whether they edited them.
“It’s not surprising that men who post a lot of selfies and spend more time editing them are more narcissistic, but this is the first time it has actually been confirmed in a study,” said Fox, the study’s lead author and an Ohio State assistant professor, in a statement.
She said the more interesting result was something else. “The more interesting finding is that they also score higher on this other anti-social personality trait, psychopathy, and are more prone to self-objectification.”
What the survey found
Narcissism and psychopathy were both tied to the number of selfies men posted. Narcissism and self-objectification were tied to editing photos of themselves before posting.
Psychopathy was not linked to editing. Editing meant cropping, using filters and using picture-editing software.
Self-objectification and narcissism also predicted how much time men spent on social-networking sites.
Ohio State said self-objectification means valuing your appearance over other positive traits. It said psychopathy in this study involved a lack of empathy or regard for others and a tendency toward impulsive behavior.
The researchers also looked at the Dark Triad, which is narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy. TIME described the trio as a set of personality traits.
The study focused on men because the dataset Fox received from a magazine did not have comparable data for women, Ohio State said. Both the study and Ohio State described the sample as nationally representative.
Ohio State stressed that the results do not mean frequent selfie posters are necessarily narcissists or psychopaths. Participants’ scores were within the normal range, though some traits were above average.
What happened next
On January 27, 2015, Fox published a clarification on her blog. She wrote that the survey measured subclinical traits and could not support conclusions about clinical psychopathy.
“We can’t draw conclusions from these data about clinical levels of psychopathy or what people would commonly describe as a ‘psychopath,’” she wrote.
Fox also cautioned that the study only observed a relationship and could not show cause and effect. She wrote that men who post many selfies may do so impulsively and without considering others.
The full paper was issued on April 1, 2015, in Personality and Individual Differences. Its title is “The Dark Triad and trait self-objectification as predictors of men’s use and self-presentation behaviors on social networking sites.”
The paper said the dataset started larger. Men without usable self-objectification data were dropped because of a technical compatibility problem, leaving the final sample of 800.
The work measured links between personality traits and online behavior. It did not diagnose participants or test whether posting selfies changes personality.
Ohio State’s study summary was updated on August 22, 2026, and still reports the original findings.
