Given their need for social recognition, narcissists often engage in activities that are valued on social media. While communicating about such socially rewarding activities on social media—what we refer to as narcissistic content—has become common, little is known about how narcissists communicate and how this communication affects social media engagement. Using the hashtag #workout and a combination of application programming interface and human coders to generate a unique dataset of 1096 Instagram posts, we show that online communication style varies with the degree of narcissism and that such communication deeply shapes audiences’ engagement with narcissistic content. Further, we show that using more hashtags significantly increases low-level engagement, while using more emojis significantly increases high-level engagement when posted by a profile with a higher degree of narcissism. By shedding light on these overlooked aspects, we aim to guide both research and practice toward a more holistic understanding of narcissistic communication and its effects on social media.

鉴于自恋者需要社会认可，他们经常从事社交媒体上重视的活动。虽然在社交媒体上交流这种有益于社会的活动（我们称之为自恋内容）已经变得很常见，但人们对自恋者如何交流以及这种交流如何影响社交媒体参与度知之甚少。通过使用主题标签 #workout 以及应用程序编程接口和人类编码员的组合来生成包含 1096 个 Instagram 帖子的独特数据集，我们表明在线交流风格随自恋程度的不同而变化，并且这种交流深刻地塑造了受众对自恋内容的参与。此外，我们还发现，使用更多的主题标签可以显着提高低水平的参与度，而当具有较高自恋程度的个人资料发布时，使用更多的表情符号可以显着提高高水平的参与度。通过阐明这些被忽视的方面，我们的目标是指导研究和实践，更全面地理解自恋沟通及其对社交媒体的影响。