Selfie taking may be nonharmful: Evidence from adaptive and maladaptive narcissism among Chinese young adults

Abstract

Human behaviors are deeply influenced by technology. In the present research, two studies were conducted to examine the relationship between narcissism and selfie taking on social networking sites in China. Study 1 showed that selfie taking was not significantly related to narcissism, neither maladaptive nor adaptive. Study 2 revealed no significant difference in maladaptive narcissism under the selfie and control conditions, whereas those under the selfie (vs. control) conditions reported greater adaptive narcissism. The current findings demonstrate that nonharmful effect of online social networking, suggesting that sociocultural and psychological factors should be concerned in understanding human behavior in the era of Internet.