Narcissism on Social Networking Web Sites - Term Paper Example

Critical Analysis of Summary: In their highly insightful and informative article d Narcissism and Social Networking Web Sites, Buffardi and Campbell (2008) take a unique approach to proving a high rate of narcissism found in social networking communities. The article’s main research question centers on finding out the rate of narcissism in people who are owners of social networking web pages. The authors of the study attempt to explicate numerous ways in which narcissism manifests itself in these owners. For this purpose, web pages were collected and then strangers were asked to review those pages in order to collect as objective results as possible. These strangers rated their impressions of the owners and on grounds of these ratings, the rate of narcissism was established. It was found out that the more narcissistic an owner happened to be, the more time he/she spent socializing with the online community and the more self-promoting content he/she posted on the web pages. Web page owners with narcissistic personality disorders were found by stranger reviewers to be more narcissistic than other web page owners. The study also discusses several implications of narcissism in the world of social networking. First, the authors explain at length the relationship between narcissism and social networking. It is implied that social networking websites offer a large number of shallow relationships. This sits well with narcissistic people because they function well in a world built on shallow relationships. They do not look for deep and intimate relationships. So, narcissistic users thrive well in online communities. They use the number of so-called friends they have on websites to show people how popular and well-liked they are. Since they are in full control of their pages, they post such content which suggests to people that they are very successful or admirable. However, real personality of users can be detected from their pages. This detection is linked to the content posted on web pages. The research study conducted by Buffardi and Campbell (2008) involves one such experiment in which personalities of users are detected by having their pages reviewed by strangers. This experiment or investigation initially used 156 undergraduate Facebook users as subjects of which 100 were female users. After some students refused the researchers to use information from their web pages, a total of 129 users were included in the main analysis of which 86 were female webpage owners. Narcissistic impression of strangers, who were asked to rate the web pages, was used as the dependent variable and narcissism of owners themselves was used as the predictor variable. The effect of the predictor variable on the dependent variable became insignificant when proposed mediators were included by researchers like time spent in socialization and nature of main photo etc. The findings with 95% confidence confirm the association between owners’ narcissism (predictor/outcome variable) and raters’ narcissistic impression (dependent variable). Narcissism was found to be related to self-promoting website activity and information posted on the main page. The study also found that narcissistic impressions depend primarily on the number of friends or social interactions along with the extent to which the main photo of an owner appears to be self-promoting, attractive, or vain. Critique: In your opinion, how valid and reliable is the study? Why? The degree to which a tool used to assess something produces consistent and stable results is called reliability. An assessment tool should produce stable and consistent results in order for a study to be considered reliable. Validity describes how well or satisfactorily measurements are carried out in a study. If a test actually measures what is intended to be measured, the study can be considered valid. On grounds of these definitions, I consider the research conducted by Buffardi and Campbell (2008) to be reliable and valid. This is because different assessment tools the authors used to predict personality of students from their Facebook web pages are capable of producing stable and consistent results any time they are used. For example, the Narcissistic Personality Inventory or the NPI score is one such assessment tool which has gained widespread acclaim due to its reliability. It has been used many times by researchers in other studies as well to determine the rate of narcissism. Also, the study is valid because assessment tools were used to measure exactly what was identified by researchers to be measured earlier in the study. Did the authors correctly interpret their findings, or are there any alternative interpretations you can think of? The study stands distinguished because the authors expertly cover everything that needs to be covered in respect to the experiment’s findings. Every possible interpretation is at length explained so that no alternative interpretations could be drawn by other readers. I found the interpretation of findings to be particularly fascinating because they intelligently address every single concern of the research experiment. They are so detailed and laced with insightful analysis that every manifestation of narcissism becomes very clear to the readers. The authors correctly interpreted from their findings that narcissistic web page owners use superficial or shallow social relationships to monitor their narcissistic esteem. Such relationships are constantly used to affirm narcissistic esteem. Did the authors of the study employ appropriate ethical safeguards? The authors of this study fully complied with all ethical standards. Webpage information of any owner was not used without his/her consent. If an owner denied the permission to use webpage information, he/she got excluded from the main analysis then and there. Also, even after all the analysis and interpretation, the owners’ names were not disclosed to anyone and they were deleted to save everyone involved in the study from unnecessary hassle or embarrassment. Nothing was done by the authors without making research participants fully aware of every action. Full awareness of the students was prioritized by the authors which makes this study compliant with ethical safeguards. Every student was assured that his/her identifying information would be deleted before letting other students view their webpages. This identifying information included name and contact information. Mention additional implications of the findings not mentioned in the article. Some implications of the research not mentioned or stressed in the article include entertaining characteristics of the narcissists. The findings can be used to study narcissists in social contexts besides online domains. For example, narcissists are not always very entertaining in social contexts. It is quite plausible that the extent to which a person’s activities could be characterized as self-promoting interfere with his/her entertaining personality characteristics. The findings also imply that narcissists depend on other narcissist friends to thrive because people wanting real relationships would stop narcissists from functioning well. The findings also imply, but it is not said so with confidence in the article, that online communities do in fact contribute to rising levels of narcissism in our society. Reference: Buffardi, L.E. & Campbell, W.K. (2008). Narcissism and Social Networking Web Sites. PSPB, 34(10), 1303-1314. Read More