Women Are The Best At Spotting Narcissists And Psychopaths, Even When Drinking

Consistently Correct

Despite their tricks, methods, and schemes, there are some people from whom a narcissist can never escape their analytical eye. For those with this skill, it never falters and it never fades, even if they're under the influence of something like alcohol.

An official study from the University of Liverpool has proven that this might be a skill inherent in women in particular, both the ability to clock a narcissist and being able to do so even while drunk.

A Terrorizing Trio

The research team was led by Dr. Gayle Brewer with the specific focus on alcohol consumption versus the ability to detect men who contain personality traits present on the "dark triad."

The dark triad is a trio of traits that are less than favorable, ones that can often predict adverse, even abusive tendencies in those who have them.

The traits are psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism. Anyone who's ever come in contact with a true narcissist knows its earned its spot among this triple threat, let alone the other two.

Proven Track Records

This study was founded on existing research that already proved that women tend to naturally dislike the faces of men with dark triad personality traits, but Brewer wanted to expand on this and see if it remained true across variables. Namely, whether or not alcohol affected that judgment.

The team gathered 96 female volunteers between the ages of 18 and 26. These volunteers were then shown photos of men whose faces had been edited to try and display high levels of dark triad traits.

Shifting Faces

In case you're wondering, no, there are no specific facial features that can give away narcissism or psychopathy. Instead, they used a "morphing technology" to approximate what these faces might look like based on past data collected about the dark triad.

"We'd take the face of someone with a high level of psychopathy, for example," Brewer explained to VICE, “and we’d morph that onto a control face. So you’d morph the psychopathy face onto my photograph, for instance.”

As Good As Ever

Brewer emphasized that the faces they used were not those of men who had been clinically diagnosed with anything on the dark triad. Instead, they were given a personality assessment that then displayed high levels of one or multiple of the triad's points.

So, the women were shown these faces after being given a few drinks, and Brewer's team discovered that their ability to detect and thus dislike those with dark triad traits were completely uninhibited by the alcohol.

Turning Away

Consistent with their foundational research, women still dislike the faces of those with a penchant for evil, able to detect it just by looking at them, even when drunk.

"When people are shown these faces, they're seen as less attractive and more threatening," Brewer confirmed.

Her hypothesis about why women are able to do this is that it was born out of an evolutionary advantage, something women have developed over decades, centuries even of having to put up with the worst these types of men have to offer.

Learned Behavior

"From an evolutionary perspective, we may be able to pick up that someone is more threatening, less likely to be trusted, or that our psychological or physical safety is at risk," Brewer said.

She went on to explain that she would be interested in seeing if there was a difference when it came to women who had poor past relationship experiences. “It would be really interesting to see whether women who’ve been in threatening relationships are more sensitive to these faces.”

Better Safe Than Sorry

So no matter if you're out celebrating or otherwise, know that your judgement about people is always worth listening to, especially if something seems wrong. Your gut an be a finnicky thing, it's true, but if you hear those alarm bells ringing or see those red flags waving, it's always worth listening to.

It's better to be wrong and have someone be nicer than they originally felt than it is to have ignored those signs and welcome a narcissist into your life.

In any relationship, always take stock of your feelings and ask yourself: does this person make you love yourself more? Do you want to grow old with them?

Love is more than just kisses and butterflies, it's much more than that. If you want to know more on what your birth chart reveals about how you love and what you need out of a partner, check out this personalized report based on date of birth.