The Biggest Tell Of A Narcissist, According To Research

It turns out, you actually can spot a narcissist before they lure you in.

By Micki Spollen — Last updated on Jul 09, 2023

Photo: Book Cover Photos / Shutterstock

There are plenty of resources where you can find the clues and signs that someone is a narcissist. For example, signs of narcissism include an inflated sense of self, risk-taking, and lack of empathy.

The problem is, many of these little hints don’t show up until you’re already settled down in a relationship with a narcissist.

You see, narcissists are charming at first. Their personalities are seductive and draw you in so that you’re in over your head before you even realize anything is wrong.

Thanks to science, however, we now know how to tell if someone is a narcissistic jerk just by looking at their face. According to a 2018 study, there’s one facial feature that tells us everything we need to know about a person’s true intentions — including whether or not you’re dealing with a narcissist.

Turns out it’s all in the eyebrows.

If you’ve ever seen Tumblr dedicated to photos of celebrities without eyebrows, you know how important those two little strips of hair are to your face. They’re not just for looks, either. In 2018, researchers released findings that revealed the reason we have eyebrows in the first place is to communicate.

“We propose that conversion of the large brow ridges of our immediate ancestors to a more vertical frontal bone in modern humans allowed highly mobile eyebrows to display subtle affiliative emotions,” the researchers wrote. Our brows help us display our emotions, often giving away how we feel without us having to say a word.

And this 2018 study by Miranda Giacomin and Nicholas O. Rule suggests eyebrows also betray the probability of Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

For the first part of the study, researchers manipulated facial features which led them to the conclusion that “that accurate judgments of grandiose narcissism particularly depend on a person's eyebrows.” Researchers then tried to find out what exactly it is about eyebrows that give someone’s narcissistic personality away and found that those with thick, dense eyebrows were more likely to be perceived as narcissists.

To test their theory, researchers swapped narcissistic and non-narcissistic eyebrows between faces and found that a non-narcissist wearing a narcissist's eyebrows was viewed as having a narcissistic personality.

Giacomin surmised that “narcissists may maintain distinct, thick, and dense brows to enhance recognition,” which we all know narcissists strive for.

According to the study, being able to identify a narcissist just by looking at their face is extremely helpful in the long run. You’re less likely to waste time dating someone only to end up in a toxic relationship because they’re a narcissist if you can guess that they have a toxic personality disorder just by looking at them.