The Relationship between Sketch and Personality : The Narcissistic Personality Inventory Research

This study investigated 73 designed beginners who drew the Venus plaster and completed the 7dimensional 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.


Introduction
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, 1984Emmons, , 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-sufficiency, 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(Kohut, , 1977;;Brudniy & Demilhanova, 2012) via self-enhancement 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(Little et al., , 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.

Participants
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 participants were beginning painters, native Chinese speakers, and had normal or corrected-to-normal vision.

Venus Paintings
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 (Figure 1) on a white paper.The plaster is composed of multiple geometric surfaces to be used to train design beginners to observe and paint the changes of the light and the shadow on each surface.Each painting was approximately 54.5 cm high and 39.3 cm wide.All paintings required approximately 6 hours to complete.A total of 73 charcoal Venus paintings were selected by 5 experts with product design experiences over 15 years (3 male, 2 female; mean age = 43 years; SD = 3.85; range = 38 -48 years).The selected paintings were clear and represented vertical and horizontal visual angles that subtended approximately 0 to 45 degrees to ensure a clear view of the face.

Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) Personality Test
After painting, the participants were asked to complete the NPI test by selecting the statements that best described themselves (see Table 1).The numbers of items for each of the seven dimensions were 8, 7, 5, 6, 5, 6, and 3.The analyses of the seven dimensions of the NPI were based on the sums of the items in each dimension.

Facial Similarity Rating Questionnaire
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 Table 2) on a 5-point Likert-type scale that ranged from 1 (not at all like him/her) to 5 (exactly like him/her).Each author' sphoto was grey-scale on a white background and displayed at vertical and horizontal visual angles that a subtended approximately 0 degrees.All of participants have given permission for their photographs to be published.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

Results
Pearson's correlation tests were used to analyze association for the gender, the Narcissism, and the rating results.

Facial Similarity Ratings
Table 3 illustrates the rates of the facial similarities between the photos of the painters and their Venus paintings.
The percentages of responses of 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 rating were 21%, 28%, 28%, 17%, and 6%, respectively.The percentage of ratings that were greater than 3 was 51%, which suggests that over half of the paintings were to the photos of the painters.

Narcissism
Table 4 illustrates the percentages of respondents to the scale that exhibited the authority, exhibitionism, superiority, entitlement, exploitativeness, self-sufficiency, and vanity dimensions.Based on the percentages, the dimensions observed were, in order of decreasing frequency authority, entitlement, exhibitionism, self-sufficiency, superiority, exploitativeness, and vanity.The scores in the authority dimension were greater than the scores in each of the other dimensions, and the lowest scores were observed in the vanity dimension.

Correlations among Gender, Narcissism, and the Paintings
Table 5 shows the correlations among the gender, the NPI dimensions, and the similarity ratings of the paintings.
Analyses of the correlations between gender and each of the dimensions revealed significant negative associations with authority, exhibitionism, and vanity (r = −0.21,p < 0.05; r = −0.21,p < 0.05; r = −0.22,p < 0.05, respectively); these results suggest that the males and females exhibited different personalities in terms of these three dimensions.However, only the self-sufficiency dimension was significantly correlated with the similarity ratings (r = 0.20, p < 0.05); this association indicates that the painters who exhibited this dimension might exhibit different psychological personalities.

Discussion
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 painters.This study discusses the evidence for these conclusions separately in the following sections.

Facial Similarity Judgments
Based on the facial similarity rating data (see Table 3), the raters certainly perceived the phenomenon of the similarities between the painters' faces and their Venus paintings.However, more than half of the raters seemed to consider between the "alike" and "unalike" ratings.Moreover, some of the participants made judgments that were slightly similar to those of the raters.The most likely explanation for this observation is that the similarity might have been difficult to identify because human faces typically share similar or common features (e.g., eyes, a nose, a mouth, and ears) (Lin et al., 2011;Proverbio et al., 2007).However, people possess an extraordinarily well-developed ability to process, recognize and extract information from the faces of others (Little et al., 2011).Additionally, the facial similarity judgments produced by the participants in this study produced varied in terms of agreement with the facial similarity judgments that were predetermined by the investigators.Not everyone has the same preferences or finds the same elements to be pleasing.This study considers that future studies will more comprehensively characterize narcissistic designers via the inclusion of greater numbers of participants.

Self-Image of the Narcissistic Personality
According to the narcissism data presented in Table 4, the statistical results indicated that one narcissistic personality dimension might have caused the phenomenon of facial similarity (Penton-Voak et al., 1999).The painters who exhibited the self-sufficiency component, which has been argued to be an indicator of the positive personality trait of "non-aggression", might also exhibit an underlying tendency for producing self-similar images (Reidy et al., 2008).The results confirmed that the evidence that suggests that narcissistic personalities affect people's behaviors and visual aesthetic attitudes (Frois & Eysenck, 1995;Furnham & Chamorro-Premuzic, 2004;Gӧtz et al., 1979;Myszkowski et al., 2014).
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(Little et al., , 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).

Conclusion
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.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Venus plaster (left) and the participants sitting around it (right).
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

Table 3 .
Distribution of the facial similarity ratings of the Venus paintings and the painters' photos on the 5-point scale (n = 107).

Table 4 .
Data regarding the seven dimensions of Narcissism (n = 73).

Table 5 .
Correlation coefficients among the 7 dimensions of Narcissism, the gender, and the similarity rating (n = 73).