This study investigated 73 designed beginners who drew the Venus plaster and completed the 7-dimensional Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) test. Next, 5-point scales were used to compare the degrees of the facial similarity between the paintings and photos of the beginners who created the paintings. The results indicated that over half of the paintings were similar to the photos of the painters, and the similarity was significantly correlated with narcissism. For example, the painters with self-sufficient personalities were more likely to exhibit assertiveness, independence, self-confidence, and need for achievement; thus, they were automatically drawn to their own sense of personal feelings as projected onto the drawings, which naturally tended to look like themselves. These results might help the educators in the design field identify the likely NPI-associated psychological and behavioral outcomes of design beginners by observing the contexts of their paintings.
Are you aware of why novice artists create pieces that reflect their individual personalities? Before this experiment, I found that design beginner’s paintings of the Venus plaster look somewhat like the beginners themselves. Does this phenomenon imply that the content of a painting is really hiding unknown aspects of the designer’s personality? Many researchers have begun to show a growing interest in the psychological aspects of human drawings since the end of the 19th century. The Draw-A-Person (DAP) test (Machover, 1949) is one of the most frequently used techniques by clinical psychologists (Anastasi & Urbina, 1994; Armstrong & Hauch, 1961; Arteche et al., 2010; Hammer, 1997; Haworth & Normington, 1961; Skybo et al., 2007; McHugh, 1966; Swensen, 1968; Willcock et al., 2011) . Furthermore, there have been numerous assertions that figure drawings, as projections of inner feelings, thoughts, conflicts, compensations, and perceptions, significantly reflect personality features (Daoud & Breik, 2009) . The underlying assumption is that a person projects important aspects of his or her “self-image” when asked to draw a figure (Aronoff & McCormick, 1990; Goodenough & Harris, 1950; Isaksson et al., 2009; Sidun & Rosenthal, 1987; Stucke & Sporer, 2002) . This study assumed that the phenomenon of reflecting self-image onto Venus drawings might be particularly associated with narcissism.
Narcissism has been well-described in the literature (Ackerman et al., 2011; Corry et al., 2008; Dimaggio et al., 2008; Emmons, 1984, 1987; Holtzman & Strube, 2010; Kubarych et al., 2004; Pincus & Lukowitsky, 2010; Raskin & Hall, 1979, 1981; Raskin & Terry, 1988; Reidy et al., 2008) . Narcissism is typically operationalized using the relatively recently created 40-item forced choice narcissistic personality inventory (NPI, Raskin & Terry, 1988 ). A sample item of this inventory is “I really like to be the center of attention” vs. “It makes me uncomfortable to be the center of attention”. Raskin and Terry (1988) decomposed the 40-item NPI into the following seven component scales: authority, exhibitionism, superiority, entitlement, exploitativeness, self-suffi- ciency, and vanity. Some diseases are associated with narcissism. Guez et al. (2010) asked patients with eating disorders to draw self-image and found that the bulimic patients’ portrayals of body size were significantly larger than those of the anorectic patients. Becker et al. (2006) indicated that bulimic patients exhibit a greater number of narcissist characteristics than do anorectic patients because bulimic patients are often concerned about being recognized and acknowledged as an attractive person. Thus, narcissism provides a new perspective to better understand these patients’ psychologies offer suitable treatments.
Narcissism is characterized in part by an acute concern for one’s appearance. In an earlier study, Machover (1949) distinguished two types of narcissism, “clothing-narcissism” and “body narcissism”, based on drawings of human figures. The former is characterized by the desire of extraverts to be appreciated, the desire to make a good impression and the narcissistic need for social regard, and the latter is characterized by introversion and a narcissistic fixation on the body (Vass, 2012: p. 332) . To date, many studies have confirmed that the narcissists with self-esteem create a “mirror” image (Kohut, 1971, 1977; Brudniy & Demilhanova, 2012) via self-enhance- ment and self-serving behaviors to achieve an external agreement with the representation of normal “self-image” (Campbell et al., 2000; Kurt & Paulhus, 2008) . Vazire et al. (2008) reported that, regarding physical appearance, narcissists are more likely to wear expensive, flashy clothing and to exhibit an organized and neat appearance that required a large amount of preparation. Furthermore, female narcissists are more likely to wear makeup, show cleavage and capture the unique constellation of personality traits that are typical of narcissists (e.g., high extraversion and low agreeableness). These findings imply that physical appearance reflects and serve the narcissist’s personality, preoccupation with good looks, and desire to be the center of attention.
Additionally, people are more likely to be attracted to their own faces (Little et al., 2003, 2011; Bereczkei et al., 2002; Penton-Voak et al., 1999; Zajonc et al., 1987) . Penton-Voak et al. (1999) asked participants to judge the attractiveness of facial photos. Using computer graphic techniques, opposite sex facial stimuli were generated from photographs of the participant. The faces that were rated “most attractive” were the photographs of each participant, which suggests that people are attracted to people with appearances similar to their own. Rushton and Bons (2005) demonstrated that genetic and environmental factors contribute to people’s preferences for spouses and friends that are similar to themselves. These findings imply that the people choose mates with similar genetic compositions. Facial attractiveness might be the underlying cause of narcissists’ self-focus and public display (Holtzman & Strube, 2010; Moskowitz et al., 2009) , which suggests that narcissism and attractiveness are positively correlated. We hypothesized that this phenomenon, which is termed “couple-face”, might be a manifestation of narcissism and that mate choices would thus be affected to some degree by the narcissistic personality.
The aim of this study was to examine why self-images were reflected in the Venus paintings. Is this reflection really associated with narcissism, and which underlying domains were the most likely to be affected? Here, we performed an experiment similar to Machover’s DAP test (but without self-figure drawing) in which design beginners were asked to draw the Venus plaster. The 40-item NPI of (Raskin & Novacek, 1989) and its seven dimensions were used to assess the correlation between the extent to which the drawings reflected the artists’ self-images and narcissism. We assumed that the narcissism involved this self-centeredness might explain the phenomenon of the reflection of self-images onto the Venus drawings.
A total of 73 participants (27 male, 46 female; mean age = 21 years; SD = 1.24; range = 20 - 27 years) from a creative product design program of Asia University were invited to participate in the experiment. All of the par- ticipants were beginning painters, native Chinese speakers, and had normal or corrected-to-normal vision.
The participants were divided into 4 groups. Each group sat facing a plaster in a professional graphics classroom. The participants were asked use charcoal to draw the head of the plaster Venus (
After painting, the participants were asked to complete the NPI test by selecting the statements that best described themselves (see
Finally, the participants were asked to complete an online version of the questionnaire. In order to measure the participants’ reactions to objects or images, the most popular method in the design study is to apply adjectival descriptions of the semantic differences (SD) and multidimensional scale (MDS). For example, such methods were used in numerous Kansei engineering research projects in Japan (Nagamachi, 1995) and in multidimensional space research (Green & Smith, 1989; Hsiao & Chen, 1997) . These studies use questionnaires with a Likert scale, mostly based on the semantics analysis developed by Osgood in 1957, to acquire the participant’s subjective responses to stimuli. Different bipolar adjectives (e.g., simple-complicated, plain-luxurious) are tested according to the stimuli and context, in the semantic differential measurement. Therefore, the participants assessed the degrees of facial similarity between photos of the artists and their Venus paintings (see
No. | Item | A | B |
---|---|---|---|
1 | A. I have a natural talent for influencing people. B. I am not good at influencing people. | 1 | 0 |
2 | A. Modesty doesn’t become me. B. I am essentially a modest person. | 1 | 0 |
3 | A. I would do almost anything on a dare. B. I tend to be a fairly cautious person. | 1 | 0 |
4 | A. When people compliment me I sometimes get. B. I know that I am good because everybody keeps telling me so. | 0 | 1 |
5 | A. The thought of ruling the world frightens the hell out of me. B. If I ruled the world it would be a better place. | 0 | 1 |
6 | A. I can usually talk my way out of anything. B. I try to accept the consequences of my behavior. | 1 | 0 |
7 | A. I prefer to blend in with the crowd. B. I like to be the center of attention. | 0 | 1 |
8 | A. I will be a success. B. I am not too concerned about success. | 1 | 0 |
9 | A. I will be a success. B. I am not too concerned about success. | 0 | 1 |
10 | A. I am not sure if I would make a good leader. B. I see myself as a good leader. | 0 | 1 |
11 | A. I am assertive. B. I wish I were more assertive. | 1 | 0 |
12 | A. I like to have authority over other people. B. I don’t mind following orders. | 1 | 0 |
13 | A. I find it easy to manipulate people. B. I don’t like it when I find myself manipulating people. | 1 | 0 |
14 | A. I insist upon getting the respect that is due me. B. I usually get the respect that I deserve. | 1 | 0 |
15 | A. I don’t particularly like to show off my body. B. I like to show off my body. | 0 | 1 |
16 | A. I can read people like a book. B. People are sometimes hard to understand. | 1 | 0 |
17 | A. If I feel competent I am willing to take responsibility for making decisions. B. I like to take responsibility for making decisions. | 0 | 1 |
18 | A. I just want to be reasonably happy. B. I want to amount to something in the eyes of the world. | 0 | 1 |
19 | A. My body is nothing special. B. I like to look at my body. | 0 | 1 |
20 | A. I try not to be a show off. B. I will usually show off if I get the chance. | 0 | 1 |
21 | A. I always know what I am doing. B. Sometimes I am not sure of what I am doing. | 1 | 0 |
22 | A. I sometimes depend on people to get things done. B. I rarely depend on anyone else to get things done. | 0 | 1 |
23 | A. Sometimes I tell good stories. B. Everybody likes to hear my stories. | 0 | 1 |
24 | A. I expect a great deal from other people. B. I like to do things for other people. | 1 | 0 |
25 | A. I will never be satisfied until I get all that I deserve. B. I take my satisfactions as they come. | 1 | 0 |
26 | A. Compliments embarrass me. B. I like to be complimented. | 0 | 1 |
27 | A. I have a strong will to power. B. Power for its own sake doesn’t interest me. | 1 | 0 |
---|---|---|---|
28 | A. I don’t care about new fads and fashions. B. I like to start new fads and fashions. | 0 | 1 |
29 | A. I like to look at myself in the mirror. B. I am not particularly interested in looking at myself in the mirror. | 1 | 0 |
30 | A. I really like to be the center of attention. B. It makes me uncomfortable to be the center of attention. | 1 | 0 |
31 | A. I can live my life in any way I want to. B. People can’t always live their lives in terms of what they want. | 1 | 0 |
32 | A. Being an authority doesn’t mean that much to me. B. People always seem to recognize my authority. | 0 | 1 |
33 | A. I would prefer to be a leader. B. It makes little difference to me whether I am a leader or not. | 1 | 0 |
34 | A. I am going to be a great person. B. I hope I am going to be successful. | 1 | 0 |
35 | A. People sometimes believe what I tell them. B. I can make anybody believe anything I want them to. | 0 | 1 |
36 | A. I am a born leader. B. Leadership is a quality that takes a long time to develop. | 1 | 0 |
37 | A. I wish somebody would someday write my biography. B. I don’t like people to pry into my life for any reason. | 1 | 0 |
38 | A. I get upset when people don’t notice how I look when I go out in public. B. I don’t mind blending into the crowd when I go out in public. | 1 | 0 |
39 | A. I am more capable than other people. B. There is a lot that I can learn from other people. | 1 | 0 |
40 | A. I am much like everybody else. B. I am an extraordinary person. | 0 | 1 |
Note: The number “1” represents the Narcissistic response, and the “0” means the Non-narcissistic response. The 7-dimensions of NPI involved items, including: (1) Authority (No. 1, 8, 10, 11, 12, 32, 33, 36); (2) Exhibitionism (No. 2, 3, 7, 20, 28, 30, 38); (3) Superiority (No. 4, 9, 26, 37, 40); (4) Entitlement (No. 5, 14, 18, 24, 25, 27); (5) Exploitativeness (No. 6, 13, 16, 23, 35); (6) Self-sufficiency (No. 17, 21, 22, 31, 34, 39); (7) Vanity (No. 15, 19, 29).
1 □ 0% not at all like him 2 □ 25% a bit like him 3 □ 50% half and half like him 4 □ 75% very much like him 5 □ 100% exactly like him | |
---|---|
1 □ 0% not at all like her 2 □ 25% a bit like her 3 □ 50% half and half like her 4 □ 75% very much like her 5 □ 100% exactly like her |
Pearson’s correlation tests were used to analyze association for the gender, the Narcissism, and the rating results.
Rating Scales | Frequency | Percentage |
---|---|---|
0% Totally Unlike | 1651 | 21% |
25% A Bit Unlike | 2241 | 28% |
50% Half and Half Like | 2186 | 28% |
75% Very Much Like | 1323 | 17% |
100% Exactly Like | 473 | 6% |
Measurements | Frequency | Percentage |
---|---|---|
Authority | 198 | 19% |
Exhibitionism | 180 | 17% |
Entitlement | 135 | 13% |
Exploitativeness | 182 | 18% |
Superiority | 109 | 11% |
Self-Sufficiency | 156 | 15% |
Vanity | 69 | 7% |
Measurements | Authority | Exhibitionism | Superiority | Entitlement | Exploitativeness | Self-Sufficiency | Vanity | Gender | Similarity Ratings | Measurements | Authority |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Authority | - | ||||||||||
Exhibitionism | 0.59** | - | |||||||||
Superiority | 0.52** | 0.59** | - | ||||||||
Entitlement | 0.59** | 0.58** | 0.53** | - | |||||||
Exploitativeness | 0.32** | 0.19 | 0.25* | 0.33** | - | ||||||
Self-Sufficiency | 0.53** | 0.43** | 0.48** | 0.48** | 0.29** | - | |||||
Vanity | 0.32** | 0.23* | 0.30** | 0.24* | 0.01 | 0.17 | - | ||||
Aggression | 0.57** | 0.50** | 0.50** | 0.87** | 0.76** | 0.49** | 0.17 | - | |||
Non-Aggression | 0.84** | 0.82** | 0.79** | 0.68** | 0.31** | 0.72** | 0.46** | 0.63** | - | ||
Gender | −0.21* | −0.21* | −0.08 | −0.13 | −0.11 | −0.10 | −0.22* | −0.15 | −0.22* | - | |
Similarity Rating | 0.06 | −0.00 | 0.11 | 0.09 | −0.06 | 0.20* | 0.13 | 0.03 | 0.12 | 0.07 | - |
Note: *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01 (one-tailed).
This study examined why paintings of the Venus plaster resemble the painters themselves. This study assumed that the similarity of the paintings with the painters would be associated with narcissistic personality traits. The results indicated that the degree of facial similarity in the paintings was correlated with narcissism of the pain- ters. This study discusses the evidence for these conclusions separately in the following sections.
Based on the facial similarity rating data (see
According to the narcissism data presented in
It would be interesting to clarify why the painters who exhibited the self-sufficiency component in this study also exhibited the self-image phenomenon in their Venus paintings. The first possible reason might be that these narcissistic painters were more likely to be attracted by their own faces (Little et al., 2003, 2011; Bereczkei et al., 2002; Holtzman & Strube, 2010; Moskowitz et al., 2009; Penton-Voak et al., 1999; Zajonc et al., 1987) . This supposition would indicate that narcissistic people are more confident, feel better than others, and are more self- centered in their comparisons of the things around them. Such people can easily separate their emotions and transfer their emotions into paintings to express their emotions because it was indirectly correlated with the “counter-transference” management ability through the independent trait of responsibility. For example, the self-sufficiency of art therapists can remain independent of responsibility, and such therapists would be capable of discriminating their desires from those of the clients in their therapy (Jiyoung & Gabsook, 2013) and capable of properly handling their counter transference feelings. Therefore, such narcissistic painters would automatically project their own senses of personal feelings into their drawing, which would naturally tend to resemble themselves.
Another possible explanation is that self-sufficient narcissists desire to be loved, which results in an unconscious expression of themselves in their paintings that is intended to draw attention to themselves. This unconscious dependency on external sources of love represents a significant source of vulnerability that must be defended against with narcissistic defenses that seek to create an illusion of self-sufficiency (Modell, 1975) . This line of reasoning might explain why self-sufficient narcissists of involving expect to arouse the attention of other by expressing their best idealized characteristics (Campbell et al., 2000; Kurt & Paulhus, 2008) , such as assertiveness, independence, self-confidence, and the need for achievement (Raskin et al., 1988) .
Although examinations of the relationships between personality and narcissismtraits and paintings are rather new in the design field, the present experiment successfully revealed the varied narcissistic dimension of the participants by presenting paintings with photos of their painters. This study considers that the present study offers new insights into the associations between paintings and narcissistic personalities, it also has some limitations. The first limitation is that this study used examined a number of assessments of facial similarity; consequently, the narcissism results of the current study cannot be generalized to these paintings. The second limitation is that the generalizability of the results to other populations with varying degrees of familiarity might be limited. The sensitivity of the similarity recognitions might have depended on the participants’ familiarities because most of the participants in this study knew the creators of the paintings. This study speculates that strangers might have reported different views and that would have affected the results of the assessment. This study considers that this paper represents a reasonably good start of the development of a measure of narcissism. Future research into the development of such an inventory should include efforts to use the existing measure and its factor structure to develop a larger item that will more exhaustively sample the domains of narcissistic behaviors and learning achievement in design.