Self-portraits taken on cell phones are ubiquitous on social media. They fulfill various tasks: They are intended to make us appear particularly attractive, provide information about our mood or document a situation we are currently in. But how do they actually affect others? A study has now determined what associations test subjects have when looking at randomly selected selfies. Many people therefore pay attention to the aesthetics of selfies. They also try to put themselves in the person’s shoes based on the pictures and draw conclusions about their mood and character.
Long before the first smartphones were developed, people were using self-portraits to communicate information about themselves. More than 500 years ago, painters put their own faces on canvas, often highlighting certain features. Today’s selfies, on the other hand, can be created faster and more intuitively. With your cell phone on your outstretched arm or on the selfie stick, it only takes one click to take a photo of yourself and a few more to share the photo with the world.
Effect on the viewer
Several studies have already looked at how selfies affect self-image and how they make the person depicted appear particularly slim, friendly or intelligent. “However, most research neglects the associative factors that viewers have in mind when they look around our selfie-oriented world,” says Claus-Christian Carbon from the University of Bamberg. Together with his colleague Tobias Schneider, he therefore chose a different approach: “We examined what selfies do to viewers and what intention they recognize behind the selfies.”
To do this, the researchers put together a pool of 1,001 selfies that were taken by hand or with a selfie stick and show the face or entire body of the person being photographed. In an online study, they asked 132 test subjects to write down their spontaneous associations in five terms for 15 randomly selected images from this pool. Schneider and Carbon evaluated these reactions and divided them into a total of 26 categories, including comments on the composition of the image such as “pixelated” or “artistic”, the clothing, style and attractiveness of the person, the location where the photo was taken, and the person’s assumed mood and motivation.
Associations categorized
The scientists then analyzed how frequently these categories appeared in the answers and whether they appeared together. In this way, they came across five so-called semantic profiles, i.e. clusters of categories in the answers: The authors define the largest cluster under the term “aesthetics”. It summarizes associations that are related to the composition of the image and the person’s appearance. The second largest cluster, to which the researchers assign the term “imagination,” includes considerations about what the person in the selfie is doing and what kind of person they are, for example, whether they are currently on the way to work and what activity she follows up.
The authors labeled further clusters “character trait,” “state of mind,” and “theory of mind.” These clusters contained associations with the personality of the person depicted, their mood, and assumptions about their motives and identity. “The semantic profiles each represent a very unique type of message that is associated with the selfies,” explains Tobias Schneider. “The clusters can be understood as archetypes of communication in the digital age.” Since all associations were based on the photos alone, without additional textual information such as image descriptions or hashtags, the authors conclude that the selfies alone are enough to convey specific messages about ourselves to convey to the outside world.
Compact visual message
“Our study contributes to the understanding of how selfies lead viewers to perceive certain qualities of the self-portrayed person in a very compact visual form,” write Schneider and Carbon. In future studies, they want to use larger, more diverse samples to examine the extent to which the messages are understood across cultures. They also want to include the perspective of the people taking the selfies to find out whether the intended message is actually being conveyed.
Source: Tobias Schneider (University of Bamberg) et al., Frontiers in Communication, doi: 10.3389/fcomm.2023.1233100