The Facial Feature That Can Help You Identify Narcissists

Scientific Backings

This sounds pretty wild, I'm sure. Our facial features should be completely disconnected from our personality, right? It's true though, as proven by a 2018 study from the University of Toronto.

The study first involved them taking photos of 40 undergraduate students holding a neutral facial expression. These students then filled out a psychological evaluation called the Narcissistic Personality Inventory which, as the name suggests, measures levels of narcissism and narcissistic traits in an individual.

Just Above Our Eyes

The photos were then presented to other students, who were then asked how narcissistic they thought each person they were shown was.

The students would be asked about their answers, asked what traits led them certain directions regarding their answer, and compared that with the actual results from the Narcissistic Personality Inventories they collected.

The results? Eyebrows were the biggest measurement tool the students used to judge narcissism. Thicker, denser, or more distinguished eyebrows especially led observers to correctly think of someone as narcissistic.

Mix And Match

The team wanted to verify this, so they took some of the eyebrows from those deemed narcissists and edited them onto people who were called non-narcissistic. Lo and behold, suddenly people were calling those faces narcissistic as well, meaning it did hinge almost entirely on the eyebrows.

Now that they have this conclusion, what does it mean? The truth is, they're not sure. There are theories, like on that explains how narcissists are more likely to groom themselves carefully as they both think highly of their appearance and hold it to very high standards, but no concrete explanation either way.

The Tiniest Tells

More recent studies have explored other ways to identify narcissists by watching their face, but this one was more about facial expression over facial features.

In order to spot this one, you have to position your suspected narcissist in a way that they're receiving criticism or experiencing a failure of sorts. This can be something very small, like correcting them about a minor fact.

When in this spot, narcissists are more likely to display small muscle twitching in the eyes and forehead. This is very subtle, so you have to be extremely vigilant, but it's something to watch for.

It's In All Of Us

Now, it's important to distinguish the difference between full-blown narcissism and narcissistic traits. Studies like these often measure narcissistic traits as an indicator of full narcissism, but narcissism is something diagnosable, fully known as Narcissistic Personality Disorder

But anyone can have narcissistic traits without having something clinical going on. In fact, we all do. Every single one of us has portions of selfishness and desire for admiration, it's the intensity of those traits that matters when it comes to narcissists who do harm and everyday people who think highly of themselves.

No Absolutes

It's also worth mentioning that just because someone has distinct eyebrows, that doesn't immediately mean they're a narcissist. While the correlation is definitely there and is worth noting if you've been burned before, going around and making assumptions like this will only leave you in a worse spot.

Like with anything, it's best to actually meet someone and speak to them fully before jumping the gun on accusations like this, even accusations you keep to yourself. By harboring feelings that someone is a narcissist when they aren't, you could be missing out on a valuable relationship you otherwise would have had if you kept an open mind.

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