Diagnosis by avatar: is it possible to suspect a mental disorder from the content of social networks

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Accounts say a little less about our personalities than they seem.

Where did the idea to diagnose by avatar come from?

The "userpic diagnosis" meme appeared during the heyday of LiveJournal. It was mainly used in an ironic manner, when the user began to give dubious arguments in a dispute. For example, he accused the interlocutor of sexual deviations if he had an image from the anime on his avatar.

But the phrase was used much broader. They tried to draw conclusions about a person, say, by the number of punctuation marks and smiles (imbalance) or the number of pronouns "I" (narcissism), or even predicted mental disorders on the basis of this.

In any case, the "userpic diagnosis" meme has always been used with irony and played around in jokes in every possible way. For example, the cover of the fake book “Sofa Psychology. Learning to determine the orientation, children's complexes and IQ of an opponent by his avatar "from the series" Trying to seem smarter ".

Social networks have somewhat changed the presence of people on the Internet. Previously, LJ, chats and forums assumed some, if not complete anonymity, so that a person could appear as he wanted. On social networks, the majority comes under their own name and adds real acquaintances as friends, so it becomes more difficult to lie. You can embellish reality, but if you are a locksmith from Tver, it is not so easy to appear as a dollar millionaire from Los Angeles.

In addition, people in general began to provide more personal information about themselves. From the average profile on a social network, you can learn about your personal life, hobbies, places of work and much more. Therefore, the topic, which was previously ironic, has become serious: is it possible to draw far-reaching conclusions about the psychological state of a person from the data that he broadcasts to the Web, and how reliable they are.

What the research says about this

Social networks are a mass phenomenon, and therefore scientists began to investigate the issue. For example, in one scientific article, the authors argue that paired photos are put on an avatar by people who are satisfied with the relationship. They also often post content related to their personal lives. Another study says this is not entirely true: more often than others, romantic information is published by people whose self-esteem depends on relationships.

Scientists from Harvard have found out whether depression can be identified by an Instagram profile. Using a neural network, they investigated when and how often people posted posts, how many people are in the picture, what colors prevail, and so on. Photos posted by depressed people were less vivid, with a predominance of blues, grays, and blacks. Moreover, such users used filters less often, and posts were published more often. But the emotions in the photo: a sad person or a cheerful one - turned out to be completely non-indicative.

Experiments were also conducted with the assessment on the basis of a Facebook profile of personality traits from the Big Five: extraversion, benevolence, consciousness, openness to experience and neuroticism. The neural network as a whole performed well in this regard and gave fairly accurate characteristics.

So far, however, this is all cautious research, one of the goals of which is to figure out whether it makes sense at all to evaluate a person using social media.

Is it possible to make a "diagnosis" based on a profile on a social network

Man is not a neural network. He refills the database more slowly, and he also has emotions. Therefore, looking at someone's profile on the social network, we can only make an impression of the author of the page. Moreover, this impression will depend largely on the personal qualities and state of the viewer.

Andrey Smirnov Master of Psychology.

In some cases, you can roughly form an opinion about a person, and then with a big reservation. There are many people on the web who strive to seem not who they really are. Therefore, conclusions about such individuals may turn out to be incorrect and even opposite to reality.

According to Andrey Smirnov, any person is multifaceted, conditional subpersonalities may be present in him, which is not a deviation. Perhaps on the Internet he plays some role or wants to shock the audience. But in any case, social networks will not give an objective idea of a person's personality.

Psychologist Dmitry Sobolev has a similar opinion. He believes that by filling the social network, we can only assume in which direction a person thinks, what emotions he is inclined to experience and, accordingly, how he behaves in society.

Dmitry Sobolev Family and personal psychologist.

But it is impossible to argue that a person has a personality disorder on this basis. This is just as wrong as if we come to visit, see a person there, crossing his arms and legs, pressing his head into his shoulders, and after reading various things, we decide that this is a closed, antisocial person and he is clearly hiding something. Error. Perhaps he is just cold or it is so comfortable for him. Labeling is wrong and counterproductive.

Forensic psychologist Oleg Dolgitsky notes that if a person is not an expert, then he will not be able to identify symptoms that will be of clinical significance.

Oleg Dolgitsky Psychology teacher, forensic psychologist.

Only extreme forms of deviation, such as violence against animals and people, pyromania, self-harm, sexual deviations, can alert. But even this is not always a sign of a pronounced disorder.

According to Oleg Dolgitsky, if you suppose that someone may have problems, it is enough to clarify with the person himself, ask him whether he is worried about anything: “If the answer is no, then there is no point in giving help.”