People Can Tell You Have This Mental Disorder By Looking at Your Facebook Profile

Your profile tells people whether you have anxiety:

Research on Facebook has suggested that individualsâ profiles are an accurate portrayal of the self and that it may be possible to identify traits such as narcissism and extraversion by viewing a Facebook profile. It has been suggested, however, that largely internal experiences, such as anxiety, should be less detectable in such contexts. In the current study, the authors tested if objective criteria (e.g., number of interests) on usersâ profiles (N 1â4 62) could discriminate between individuals who were higher and lower in social anxiety. The authors asked six coders to view each participantâs Facebook profile and rate the participantâs level of social anxiety and then tested whether these ratings correlated with the participantâs own self-reported social anxiety level. Our results suggest that social anxiety is recognizable both in objective criteria on the Facebook profile page and from ratersâ impressions of the Facebook profile. Clinical and research implications are discussed.

Source: “Profiling: Predicting Social Anxiety From Facebook Profiles” from Social Psychological and Personality Science