There is one thing I don't leave the house without doing: my eyebrows. So light and sparse are my brows, I'll rarely even head to a hot yoga class without at least a few quick flicks to fill them out. Apparently, this makes me a narcissist, according to a new study.
It's no secret that certain beauty choices can tip you off about a person's personality — glitter lips, for example, are not exactly for the faint of heart. But researchers at the University of Toronto found that one facial feature, in particular, belies hints of a narcissistic personality: your eyebrows.
In the first of three sets of studies, researchers took headshots of participants before having them complete the Narcissistic Personality Inventory — a standardized test researchers and psychologists use to evaluate narcissism (and apparently makeup shame). Next, they showed the photos to a second group of people who were asked to pick out the narcissists.
Turns out, the self-important, aggressive, and categorically entitled personality is pretty easy to spot. But the researchers wanted to drill down on exactly which facial features gave it away. So they started cropping the photos "showing just the upper or lower halves of the face, the eyes, the brows, etc.," Miranda Giacomin, Ph.D., lead author on the study, tells Allure. "We found that people could accurately judge others' narcissism from the upper half of the face — more specifically, the eyebrows alone," she says.
Giacomin then had participants rate the brows for traits like grooming and femininity. She found "eyebrow distinctiveness" (aka the thickness and density of your arches) is correlated with your level of narcissism. The bolder the brows, the more attention-seeking and self-important the person, apparently. The effect is so strong that photoshopping a non-narcissist's brows on to a narcissist's face actually changed peoples' perceptions, as the researchers discovered in further studies. The link applies whether you have naturally bold arches or, like me, insist on giving your naturally non-existent brows a boost, Giacomin says. How rude.
A penchant for bold brows may feed into a narcissist's need to be recognized, Giacomin explains. "In addition, thick brows are trendy right now. A person's preference for thick brows may be related to their desire to be attractive and popular," she says.
So, what exactly are you supposed to do with this information (aside from try to resist feeling eyebrow-shamed…)? According to the authors, you can use the boldness of someone's brows to prepare yourself for any lurking narcissistic traits, such as self-importance, aggressiveness, and entitlement. But if you're trying to appear more empathetic, thinning out your brows probably won't help, Giacomin says. "Previous research has also found that plucked eyebrows are also linked to greater narcissism," she explains.
If the simple act of filling in your brows to make them look bolder suggests you're a narcissist, we can only imagine what rocking full-on garden brows says about you...
For the best responses to makeup shaming:
- Khloe Kardashian Gives Hilarious Response to Makeup Shamers
- Sleek Makeup Is Clapping Back at Makeup Shamers In the Best Way
- These Rude Teens Makeup Shamed a Waitress Instead of Tipping Her
How do pierced brows rank though?:
