If you use social media, chances are you’ve occasionally copped to taking a sneaky selfie. Self-portraits are nothing new: one of the earliest surviving examples was made by the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten’s chief sculptor, Bak, way back in 1365 BC. Despite this, however, digital selfies are frequently held up as an example of vapid, vain millennial culture.

Several psychological studies have explored support the link between selfies and narcissism. So far, the results have been inconclusive (although they tend to suggest that selfie-posting men are more narcissistic than selfie-posting women).

But now, researchers in the US have shown that people’s motives for posting selfies often go beyond self-obsession and seeking validation.

As part of the study, published in the journal Visual Communication Quarterly, researchers identified three different kinds of selfie-takers – and found that they had very distinct motivations for posting photos online.

Most selfie-takers aren’t actually driven by narcissism, say researchers