Who's the Vainest?
Celebrities often seem obsessed with their own image. But which comes first, self-absorption or fame? The answer emerged after two professors at the University of Southern California, S. Mark Young and Drew Pinsky, gave anonymous personality tests to 200 celebrities and 200 business students. (The celebrities were all guests on Pinsky's Loveline radio show.) The celebrities generally scored higher than the business students on attributes such as exhibitionism, perceived superiority, and vanity- especially the female stars, who scored 11% higher than the male celebrities, 12%higher than the male students, and 22% higher than the female students in overall narcissism. REality TV personalities ranked highest in all categories combined, followed by comedians, actors, and musicians. Because Young and Pinsky found that celebrities' scores had no relation to the number of years the stars have been in the public eye, they conclude that these people have a tendency toward narcissistic traits that leads them to be in the limelight, rather than vice versa.