Abstract
Selfies refer to self-portraits taken by oneself using a digital camera or a smartphone. They become increasingly popular in social media. However, little is known about how selfies reflect their owners’ personality traits and how people judge others’ personality from selfies. In this study, we examined the association between selfies and personality by measuring participants’ Big Five personality and coding their selfies posted on a social networking site. We found specific cues in selfies related to agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness. We also examined zero-acquaintance personality judgment and found that observers had moderate to strong agreement in their ratings of Big Five personality based on selfies. However, they could only accurately predict selfie owners’ degree of openness. This study is the first to reveal personality-related cues in selfies and provide a picture-coding scheme that can be used to analyze selfies. We discussed the difference between personality expression in selfies and other types of photos, and its possible relationship with impression management of social media users.
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