Narcissism as a predictor of number of selfies: a cross-cultural examination of Japanese and American postings

ABSTRACT Social Networking Sites (SNS) user behavior has been discussed in association with SNS user personality characteristics, such as narcissism. However, gender and cultural influences on the relationship between selfie posting on SNS and narcissism remain unclear. Thus, the present study included gender and culture to investigate the relationship between narcissism and selfie posting using 232 Japanese and 481 American college students. The main findings include: (a) while the data failed to show a significant difference in level of narcissism across culture, significant gender differences were found in each culture; (b) our data show no significant difference in the number of selfies across culture/gender or level of narcissism; (c) self-esteem moderated the relationship between narcissism and the number of selfies for American male college students.