While thick, defined eyebrows have been trendy the last few years, an award-winning study finds the brows could give away more than someone being in style. According to a study from the University of Toronto, people with bushier brows are more likely to act self-centered and act entitled.
The study was published back in 2018, but it just won a 2020 Ig Nobel Prize this month. Researchers took “neutral expression” photos of college students and had them take a standardized narcissistic personality test to see where they fall on the spectrum. Then volunteers had to look at the images of strangers and then rate them based on who they thought was “egotistical, self-focused and vain.”
Researchers hid different facial features in the images to see which ones tipped volunteers off most accurately and they found the brows gave it all away every time. The eyebrows were classified in terms of density, shape, grooming and distinctiveness and it was people with the distinctive ones – as in bushy and prominent – who were more likely to be accurately identified as narcissists. But as study author Miranda Giacomin points out, when we meet someone in real life, we use a wide variety of cues to form impressions of people, not just their faces. We’re looking at their hair, what they’re wearing and such, so the study results might not reflect real-life experiences.
Source: Insider