In nature, animals often bare their teeth to intimidate others — but humans, evidently, snap selfies.
That’s the word from a study from the University of Swansea’s School of Psychology, which found the most common selfie-snappers, women, do so in an effort to intimidate others.
The published study scanned through pictures that were posted by 150 individuals and analyzed them for what the scientists called “self-presentation strategies” — that is, what impression they’re trying to show off to others.
While some people posted more than 40 selfies a month, on average, women published five selfies and 10 non-selfies a month, versus an average of two selfies and six non-selfies a month from men.
The women in the study were more commonly found to adopt “intimidatory self-presentational strategies” in their pictures. “The more they tended to emit actions in the real world with an intent to project a powerful and dangerous personality to induce fear in others, the more they posted selfies,” the researchers also concluded.
They noted the selfies weren’t aimed at any gender in particular — i.e. to make other women jealous — “but at the online community in general.”
On the other hand, the men didn’t show this tendency to intimidate. In fact, their selfie-posting was “to avoid punishment,” meaning to be accepted.
The study was interesting, as previous studies showed that when it comes to the IRL world, women didn’t display this “aggressive characteristic” versus how men behave in real life.
The scientists speculate that removing the social constraints of the real world — where women are generally expected not to appear aggressive — allows women to feel free enough to bare their teeth, so to speak, when they’re showing their duck face.