The Dark Triad
Author: Paulo Coelho
People who post selfies on social networks like Instagram and Facebook are more likely to exhibit what some psychologists call the “dark triad” of personality traits, according to two previous studies of nearly 1,200 men and women who completed personality tests and answered questions on their online habits.
This dark triad consists of
narcissism (extreme self-centeredness),
Machiavellianism (manipulation of others) and
psychopathy (acting impulsively with no regard for other people’s feelings),
they noted.
Constantly posting selfies not only intensifies peer pressure, it also provides an unrealistic mirror of our own lives, experts say.
“It’s not a wonderful personality constellation,” says Jesse Fox, assistant professor of communications at Ohio State University, and co-author of the aforementioned studies of 800 men — “The Dark Triad” — published in the April 2015 edition of “Personality and Individual Differences,” a peer-reviewed journal, and a similar paper studying 400 women.
