---
title: "Your Selfies Make You Look Like a Lonely Loser, Study Finds"
description: "A study found that Instagrammers who post a lot of selfies are perceived as less adventurous, less successful, and more lonely than \"posie\" posters."
date: "2019-08-22"
modified: "2019-08-22"
authors:
  - name: "Kristin Houser"
    link: "https://futurism.com/authors/kristin"
url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/selfies-lonely-loser-study-finds"
categories:
  - "Future Society"
tags:
  - "instagram"
  - "selfie"
  - "the digest"
---

# Your Selfies Make You Look Like a Lonely Loser, Study Finds

![A study found that Instagrammers who post a lot of selfies are perceived as less adventurous, less successful, and more lonely than "posie" posters.](<https://futurism.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/selfies-lonely-loser-study-finds.jpg>)
*\<em\>Image: Victor Tangermann\</em\>*

## Selfie Stick

The next time you're about to post a [selfie](<https://futurism.com/neoscope/selfies-pushing-teens-plastic-surgery>) to Instagram, consider this: it could make people think you're a loser.

For a new [study](<https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0092656619300674?via%3Dihub>) published in the *Journal of Research in Personality* with the awesome/awesomely bad title "Check Your Selfie before You Wreck Your Selfie," U.S. researchers asked 119 undergraduate students to review the [Instagram](<https://futurism.com/rick-perry-instagram-hoax>) feeds of 30 undergraduates at a college across the U.S., looking at just the 30 most-recently posted photos.

They then asked the students to [rate those Instagrammers](<https://www.fastcompany.com/90392084/researchers-confirm-that-your-selfies-make-you-look-like-an-ahole>) based on 13 attributes — and they rated people who posted a lot of selfies as being less adventurous, less successful, and more lonely than people who shared "posies," meaning photos taken by someone else.

## Strike a Pose

According to researcher Chris Barry, a professor of psychology at Washington State University, it didn't matter what the person was doing in the [Instagram](<https://futurism.com/the-byte/instagram-fact-check-memes>) photos, either.

"Even when two feeds had similar content, such as depictions of achievement or travel, feelings about the person who posted selfies were negative and feelings about the person who posted posies were positive," he said in a [press release](<https://news.wsu.edu/2019/08/20/selfie-versus-posie/>).

One type of selfie did garner more hate than any other though: anything with a physical appearance theme, such as flexing in the mirror — something to remember the next time you're at the gym and thinking about snapping a selfie for the 'gram.

**READ MORE:** [Researchers confirm that your selfies make you look like an a\*\*hole](<https://www.fastcompany.com/90392084/researchers-confirm-that-your-selfies-make-you-look-like-an-ahole>) \[*Fast Company*\]

**More on selfies:** *[Doctors Say Selfies Are Pushing More Teens to Get Plastic Surgery](<https://futurism.com/neoscope/selfies-pushing-teens-plastic-surgery>)*

### Author social links  
[LinkedIn](<https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristinjhouser>)