Hooked to selfies because you think you are attractive - here`s a reality check

Toronto: If you are never tired of posting selfies on Facebook and Instagram, it is time to sit back and look at your face carefully. According to the researchers, most people who post regular selfies are not attractive and overestimate their beauty which may make them narcissists.

According to the team from University of Toronto, participants ranked frequent selfie takers as less attractive and less likeable compared to those who did not go overboard with self-portraits.

To reach this conclusion, the team led by Daniel Re analysed selfie-taking habits of 198 college students.

Selfie lovers were asked to take selfies and were then photographed by one of the team members.

Now, the researchers had selfies and normal pictures of the participants to analyse, www.psypost.org reported.

“Both groups, the habitual selfie-takers and non-selfie-takers, showed self-favouring bias by thinking that they would be seen as more attractive and more likeable in their photos than they were actually seen by the independent raters,” the report added.

The selfie-takers overestimated themselves significantly more in the study published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science.

Both groups’ selfies were rated as less attractive than the experimenter-taken photos by the independent raters.

“They also thought the selfie-takers looked significantly more narcissistic than the non-selfie-takers on the basis of their selfies,” the report added.

According to the team, frequent selfie taking may increase people’s susceptibility to self-favouring bias - causing them to overestimate the attractiveness of their photos.