The debate about what motivates people (who are we kidding, this almost always means women) to take selfies has been raging since the invention of the front lens on camera phones that made taking them so easy. And while people have been taking (and painting) self-portraits pretty much forever, it wasn’t until camera phones made it a literal snap by putting the technology in our hands — combined with the advent of social media — that the selfie became ubiquitous. While some people have argued that taking selfies is a radical feminist act of self-love and body positivity others have hypothesized that selfies are a sign of narcissism . Enter the student researchers at Brigham Young University, who decided to study people’s motivations for taking selfies after realizing that their motives for snapping photos of themselves were much more complex than simple narcissistic tendencies would allow for. The results of their study, published in the journal Visual Communication Quarterly , found three main types of selfie-takers: communicators, autobiographers, and self-publicists. Their research involved asking their 46 study participants to arrange different statements about why one might take selfies in order from most to least like them, and then analyzing their responses. Communicators are people who use selfies to engage their friends or social media followers in conversation. The example they cite is a selfie showing you wearing your “I Voted” sticker — like Shonda Rhimes — which can encourage others to exercise their rights and may open up a conversation about candidate platforms. “[Communicators are] all about two-way communication,” explained co-author Maureen “Mo” Elinzano.