تصویری از یک عاشق: جلوه های خودشیفتگی در ظاهر جسمانی

Narcissism is characterized in part by an acute concern for one’s appearance. Despite this fundamental aspect of narcissism, little is known about whether narcissism is manifested in features of physical appearance. Can you tell if someone is narcissistic just by looking at them? Our results indicate that snap judgments of narcissism based on full-body photographs are at least as accurate as snap judgments of any of the big five personality traits. Narcissists are more likely to wear expensive, flashy clothing, have an organized, neat appearance requiring a lot of preparation, and (in females) wear makeup and show cleavage. Furthermore, observers’ judgments correlate with the presence of these cues, suggesting that they are drawing on the correct information when making their judgments. Finally, observers’ judgments are associated with three of the four facets of narcissism and capture the unique constellation of personality traits typical of narcissists (i.e., high extraversion and low agreeableness). These findings suggest that physical appearance reflects narcissists’ personality, preoccupation with good looks, and desire to be the center of attention, and serves as a vehicle with which to promote their status.

It is no accident that the myth from which narcissism gets its name has its crucial turning point when the central character Narcissus catches sight of himself reflected in a pool of water. So mesmerized was Narcissus by his own unattainable reflection that he exclaimed “then let me look at you and feed my wretched frenzy on your image” (Ovid, 2004, book III, lines 621–622). This acute concern about one’s appearance is a fundamental aspect of sub-clinical narcissism1 (Raskin and Terry, 1988 and Sedikides et al., 2007) but has received no empirical attention. The psychological portrait of narcissists has been well described (Morf & Rhodewalt, 2001; Vazire & Funder, 2006) but there is strong reason to believe that narcissism also has a distinct physical signature. Indeed, there is good theoretical reason to suppose that of all traits, narcissism will be manifested in the domain of appearance. What are the visible cues that betray narcissism and do observers pick up on them? Research on the accuracy of snap judgments, or “zero-acquaintance” judgments, has shown that some traits can be accurately perceived from minimal information. For example, targets’ extraversion and conscientiousness can be perceived accurately after a very brief interaction (Kenny, 1994 and Watson, 1989), intelligence can be perceived accurately after watching a videotape of the targets reading a weather report (Borkenau & Liebler, 1993), and openness to experience can be perceived accurately after seeing the targets’ bedrooms or websites, or hearing their top-10 favorite songs (Gosling et al., 2002, Rentfrow and Gosling, 2006 and Vazire and Gosling, 2004). However, we know very little about how narcissism—the trait most explicitly connected to appearance—is manifested and perceived in everyday life.