Apart from having an unusually high amount of selfies on their phone and suspiciously white teeth, how can one identify a narcissist? A study suggests that you should only gaze at their eyebrows.
According to recent University of Toronto research that was published in the Journal of Personality, narcissistic personality traits are more common in those who have “distinctive eyebrows.”
The Greek tale of young Narcissus, who fell in love with his reflection in a pool of water, is where the name “narcissist” originated. Strong narcissistic personality traits generally result in extremely high self-loving scores.
They often give off a positive first impression, coming across as likeable and pleasant, but they often display selfish and self-centered conduct, frequently having an exaggerated opinion of their own skills or beauty.
And they also have amazing eyebrows, for some reason.
The researchers took pictures of nearly forty undergraduate students with expressions that were neutral in order to reach this conclusion.
To determine the degree of any narcissistic traits, they then had the students complete the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, a psychological test.
Other participants were shown the photos by the researchers, and they were asked to estimate each person’s level of narcissism based just on appearance.
First off, their preliminary findings indicated that participants were especially skilled at estimating students’ levels of narcissism by looking at their eyebrows.
Specifically, a high hair density and thick eyebrows were more likely to be cited as reliable indicators of narcissism.
They went on to measure the extent to which narcissists’ and non-narcissists’ views of narcissism differed when the brows of the two groups of people were switched.
This shows that when they put the eyebrows of non-narcissists on narcissists, their features were judged as less narcissistic, and vice versa.
According to their conclusion, this demonstrates how “distinctive eyebrows reveal narcissists’ personalities to others” and how it has a significant impact on whether or not people perceive you as narcissistic.
What makes this possible, then? The researchers noted that while eyebrows are crucial for social interactions and nonverbal communication, humans have a particularly keen sense of them, but they did not hunt for a mechanism to explain this connection.
Moreover, an individual’s eyebrow can serve as a microcosm of their entire appearance and identity.
Narcissists seek to be admired, so maintain a high level of grooming. “Individuals reporting high levels of narcissism tend to wear more fashionable, stylish, and expensive clothing; have a neater, more organized appearance; and look more attractive,” the study authors write.
Both male and female brows are crucial for facial identification and mate selection, and well-groomed eyebrows indicate that the owner is aware of this.