People prefer to see fewer selfies on social media: Study

London: People like taking and sharing selfies, but do not like seeing others posting them on social media, a new study has found.

The study shows that people perceive their own selfies as more authentic than others.

Researchers at Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU) of Munich in Germany conducted an online survey to assess people's motives and judgements when taking and viewing selfies.

A total of 238 people living in Austria, Germany and Switzerland completed the survey.

The researchers found that 77 per cent of the participants regularly took selfies.

"One reason for this might be their fit with widespread self-presentation strategies such as self-promotion and self-disclosure" said Sarah Diefenbach, professor at LMU.

"The selfie as a self-advertisement, plying the audience with one's positive characteristics or the selfie as an act of self-disclosure, sharing a private moment with the rest of the world and hopefully earning sympathy, appear to be key motivators," she said.

A third form of self-presentation is categorised as understatement, where someone portrays themselves and their achievements and abilities as unimportant.

Participants who scored highly on "self-promotion" or "self-disclosure" were more likely to be positive about taking selfies compared with participants who scored highly on "understatement."

Interestingly, despite 77 per cent of the participants taking selfies regularly, 62-67 per cent agreed on the potential negative consequences of selfies, such as impacts on self-esteem.

This negative perception of selfies was also illustrated by 82 per cent of participants indicating that they would rather see other types of photos instead of selfies on social media.

Taking these attitudes at face value, selfies should not be as popular as they are. This phenomenon, where many people regularly take selfies but most people do not appear to like them has been termed the "selfie paradox" by Diefenbach.

The key to the paradox may lie in the way the participants view their own selfies, compared with those of others.

The participants attributed greater self-presentational motives and less authenticity to selfies taken by others, compared with those taken by themselves, which were also judged as self-ironic and more authentic.

"This may explain how everybody can take selfies without feeling narcissistic. If most people think like this, then it is no wonder that the world is full of selfies," said Diefenbach.

The study was published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology.