Crossdressers-Haven.com

By Roger Dobson
Last Updated: 3:48PM BST 09/07/2008
Visible cleavage, plucked eyebrows and a cheery smile are all warning signs of a narcissistic personality, psychologists have discovered.

Observers are quick to pick up on such signals and use them to categorise people at a glance, according to a new study.

Such accuracy and speed of detection may have evolved to allow people to steer clear of narcissists and thus avoid the downsides of their behaviour, which include self-deception and a lack of regard for others, the researchers believe.

The findings emerged from the first academic investigation into the physical appearance of narcissists.

“We found that narcissism does have a distinct physical signature, and can be detected from physical appearance alone,” says Dr Peter Rentfrow, a psychologist at the University of Cambridge, and one of the team that carried out the study.

“Narcissists tend to be quite charming initially, but once you get into the relationship you realise your attempts to do something other than what the narcissist wants are foiled.”

The condition owes its name to the Greek myth of Narcissus, a handsome youth who rejected the advances of a nymph, and as punishment was doomed to fall in love with his own reflection in a pool of water.

But psychiatrists nowadays consider “narcissistic personality disorder” as a distinct, diagnosable malady, defined as individuals displaying “a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and a lack of empathy”.

The research involved 160 young men and women at the University of Texas who each asked three people they knew to provide a rating of their personality. They also completed a battery of personality tests, and then had their full-length photograph taken.

A panel of people were then asked to guess the personality type of the people in the photos. The researchers compared their guesses with the actual personality of the individuals as assessed in the tests and by their friends.

The results show that the rating panel was able to spot narcissists with a high degree of accuracy. The giveaway clues were a neat, organised and attractive appearance; stylish and expensive clothes; and a cheerful demeanour.

For women, key markers included showing cleavage, having plucked eyebrows and wearing make-up. For men, a muscular physique was rated as a key indicator, whereas wearing glasses was a sign of not being narcissistic.

“Our exploratory analyses suggest that narcissism is associated with a neat, organised appearance, flashy, revealing clothing, greater adornment like make-up, and expensive, stylish clothes,” say the researchers, whose study is to appear in the Journal of Research in Personality.

“These results suggest that narcissists do seem to alter their appearance, consciously or unconsciously, in a way that reflects their appearance-oriented motives.

"The image that narcissists create appears to capture the unique constellation of personality traits characteristic of narcissism.

"Narcissism is associated with vanity, exhibitionism, and status-seeking.

"Our findings show that these values are reflected in narcissists’ physical appearance - in the clothes they wear, the effort they put into their appearance, and their less-inhibited display of their bodies.”

The psychologists say that the remarkable accuracy of snap judgements of narcissism probably reflects the importance of the trait in interpersonal interactions.

“Narcissism has important consequences both for narcissists and those who must interact with them,” they say.

“For those who must interact with narcissists, they face a host of unpleasant or maladaptive behaviours such as self-deception, even in the face of disconfirming evidence; anger, hostility, and aggression in the face of threat to their ego; and self-enhancement and self-serving attributions.

“Perhaps the ability to judge narcissism quickly and accurately is in the service of avoiding such potentially unpleasant interactions.”

Jeannie wrote: Put a few spaces between the e and r in therapists and what does it spell?