Narcissists sound a lot more sinister than they actually are. Maybe it's because the word sounds a bit like sinister, the idea of someone being a narcissist seems pretty threatening, if not a little frightening. However, a lot of the time, narcissism just refers to someone absolutely loving themselves. Kim Kardashian is presumably a narcissist, Simon Cowell almost definitely is, as, I imagine, is Donald Trump.
But, while it's easy to label narcissists as simply self-loving and vain people, they do have a dark undertone to their character. They often make good first impressions, appearing to be likeable and charming, but they also exhibit self-centred and selfish behaviour. Narcissists, as a rule, often have a grandiose view of their own abilities or appearance.
However, while spotting a narcissist is easy to do once you get talking to them, it can pretty hard to identify them off of appearance alone... until now.
Apparently, if you're looking for a way to weed out the narcissists from the good guys, simply take a look at their eyebrows.
A team of researchers came to this surprising conclusion after they photographed around 40 undergrad students with neutral expressions. They then got participants to carry out a psychological test known as the Narcissistic Personality Inventory to test the strength of any narcissistic traits. The researchers then showed the photographs to other students and asked them to guess how narcissistic each person was based on their appearance.
At first, the results showed that people were particularly good at making an estimation of someone's narcissism based on their eyebrows. In particular, the eyebrow thickness and a high density of hair were most likely to be used to judge the narcissistic tendencies.
They expanded on this by measuring the extent of how the perceptions changed once they swapped the narcissists and non-narcissists eyebrows. Suddenly, participants rated narcissists’ faces as less narcissistic when they donned non-narcissists’ eyebrows and vice versa.
The researchers concluded that this shows "distinctive eyebrows reveal narcissists’ personality to others," as well as strongly influencing whether people view you as narcissistic from the get-go.
But why eyebrows? Will, researchers didn't look for an exact reason to explain the link but they did note how eyebrows are highly important for social functions and nonverbal communication. Furthermore, the researchers stated that eyebrows can be used to as a microcosm of a person's wider personality 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 wrote.
Not only do eyebrows reveal your narcissistic tendencies, but they are also very important for facial recognition and mate selection (in both females and males), and a pair of meticulously well-kept eyebrows suggest the owner knows this.
So, I guess that Cara Delevingne is the queen of all narcissists then?