E-mmortal: Death Anxiety is Related to Selfie Behaviors

Abstract

Given the widespread phenomenon of selfies, numerous studies are examining the motivations behind taking and sharing selfies. The current paper suggests an additional possible motivation, namely, decreasing death anxiety. People are motivated to decrease their death anxiety by preserving a fake feeling of immortality. One known way to achieve this goal is by using photography. Therefore, we suggest that selfie behaviors are a way to fulfill the need to remain immortal. A hundred undergraduate students ( Mage = 22.33) answered self-reported questionnaires regarding selfie motivations, selfie-taking frequency, selfie-sharing frequency, and death anxiety. All of those selfie measurements were indeed positively related to death anxiety. Moreover, many previous studies suggested that narcissism motivates selfie behaviors. In an exploratory approach, we examined whether death anxiety mediates this relationship. Indeed, death anxiety fully mediated the relationships between narcissism and selfie motivations and between narcissism and selfie-taking frequency, suggesting that the well-documented association between selfie behaviors and narcissism might be driven by death anxiety. Those preliminary results indicate that death anxiety is associated with selfie behaviors, opening new avenues for understanding the motivations underlying selfie behaviors.