An exploratory study of "selfitis" and the development of the Selfitis Behavior Scale

Balakrishnan, J and Griffiths, MD ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8880-6524, 2018. An exploratory study of "selfitis" and the development of the Selfitis Behavior Scale. International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction, 16 (3), pp. 722-736. ISSN 1557-1874

Preview

Text PubSub9642_Griffiths.pdf - Published version Download (480kB) | Preview

Abstract

In 2014, stories appeared in national and international media claiming that the condition of "selfitis" (the obsessive taking of selfies) was to be classed as a mental disorder by the American Psychiatric Association and that the condition could be borderline, acute, or chronic. However, the stories were a hoax but this did not stop empirical research being carried out into the concept. The present study empirically explored the concept and collected data on the existence of selfitis with respect to the three alleged levels (borderline, acute, and chronic) and developed the Selfitis Behavior Scale (SBS). Initially, focus group interviews with 225 Indian university students were carried out to generate potential items for the SBS. The SBS was then validated using 400 Indian university students via exploratory factor analysis (EFA). Six factors were identified in the EFA comprising environmental enhancement, social competition, attention seeking, mood modification, self-confidence, and social conformity. The findings demonstrate that the SBS appears to be a reliable and valid instrument for assessing selfitis but that confirmatory studies are needed to validate the concept more rigorously.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction
Creators:	Balakrishnan, J. and Griffiths, M.D.
Publisher:	Springer
Date:	June 2018
Volume:	16
Number:	3
ISSN:	1557-1874
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1007/s11469-017-9844-x DOI 9844 Publisher Item Identifier
Rights:	This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
Divisions:	Schools > School of Social Sciences
Record created by:	Linda Sullivan
Date Added:	05 Dec 2017 15:51
Last Modified:	01 Aug 2018 14:39
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/32142

Actions (login required)

Edit View

Statistics

Views

Downloads