Unlike men, women do not just post photos of themselves online out of a desire to please members of the opposite sex.
Some people are literally inundated with endless selfies on social media. British psychologists, whose article was published in the Journal of Social Media in Society, have found that the motives behind such behaviour vary widely between genders.
Women, who are generally inclined to take selfies, unknowingly take them to prove themselves loudly to the world – to prove their confidence, determination, assertiveness and aggressiveness.
While men who take selfies are just looking to be liked and hoping to curry favour with the opposite sex. The researchers came to these conclusions after analyzing the data of 436 men and women aged 18 to 30 years. All of them were subjected to various surveys and psychological tests.
In addition, scientists assessed the number of selfies in their social networks
It turned out that, on average, women posted five selfies and ten other photos, while men posted two selfies and six other photos per month. But there were also people among the participants who posted more than 40 selfies a month.
The more a woman tends to demonstrate personality traits traditionally considered masculine – the desire to dominate, dominate, inspire fear in others, show aggression – the more selfies she posts, psychologists have found out. But for men, there was no correlation between masculine behaviour in real life and the number of selfies on social media.
“Based on the findings, the traditional notion that aggression is unique to men is worth reconsidering,” said one of the study’s authors, Professor Philip Reed of Swansea University. – “The behaviour on social media shows that women are not programmed to be passive. They can be just as, or in some circumstances even more aggressive than men, and this is not necessarily due to sexual competition.