People who regularly tweet are more narcissistic than those who use Facebook, according to a new study.
Researchers interviewed more than 1,000 participants, aged between 18 and 75, to understand the personality traits of social media users.
The participants were asked questions, including how often they tweeted, how many Twitter followers they had and how often they updated their Facebook profiles.
The researchers found that narcissism was more closely linked with prolific tweeting than with updating Facebook, 'Sky News' reported.
"Although 'conversations' can occur using Twitter, the medium is designed for one-way interactions where users 'tweet' information to their contacts," according to researcher Shaun W Davenport, chair of management and entrepreneurship at High Point University, US, and colleagues.
"These contacts are labelled as 'followers' in Twitter rather than the more egalitarian label of 'friends' in Facebook," the researchers said.
"Given that narcissists have an inflated self-view and engage in a variety of strategies aimed at bringing attention to themselves, features unique to Twitter may be more appealing to narcissists than those on sites such as Facebook," they added.
The authors said that narcissists believe themselves to be superior, unique or special and therefore exhibit entitled behaviours and beliefs, such as demanding special treatment.
"Twitter likely provides an even more attractive platform for narcissists because it lends itself more readily to frequent, self-centred updates and provides for the shallow, non-intimate, non-reciprocal relationships (ie, one-way relationships) most likely desired by narcissists," the study said.
The study was published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior.
