I have a lot to say today—and all of it about myself. I was struck, as was Mishka, by the mistake I made in thinking Blagojevitch and I shared the same name. What was particularly interesting about it was that I have seen Blagojevitch’s first name in print probably a hundred times or more, but I had always mistakenly read my own name instead. The story Mishka recounts in his comment on the last post (Anthony Grafton reviewing Adam Sutcliffe’s book and calling him “Anthony Sutcliffe” the whole time). That example is different, but only insofar as it is more typical. Anthony Grafton called Adam’s book “passionate, well-informed and eloquent”—and accidentally gave Adam his own first name. I called Blagojevitch a criminal, a “loser” and a “dick”—and still accidentally gave him my own name.

So, as scholars and intellectuals like to say, what’s up with that? Narcissism, or the belief in the exceptional centrality of our selves, concerns and interests, seems to be so strong and pervasive that it doesn’t discriminate very much even between positive and negative forms. That is, generalizing absurdly on the basis of just these two examples, we could conclude that people want so very badly to see themselves everywhere (Being John Malkovich anyone?) that they will even find themselves in crummy turds like Rod Blagojevitch. Or maybe I’m just a masochist.

But let’s pause a moment on me, and think about me for a little while. Just how narcissistic am I? Well, the photo above is so embarrassingly narcissistic that Mishka can’t stand to look at it, especially with the added “reflection” below the photo which makes it appear that my shirt is hanging open à la Fabio. (But the reflection is essential this time as a further allusion to Narcissus…) So, how narcissistic is a self-portrait done by someone with a fairly competent grasp of Photoshop? Well, I removed the giant pimple on my nose, smoothed out the “smile lines,” got rid of any forehead wrinkles, blued up the eyes and —here’s the real professional trick—increased the apparent strength of the jawline by using the “burn tool” all along the jaw. I thought the finished product looked great. So why did I like it and Mishka thought it was ridiculous, like a stage magician’s promo photo?

Honestly, Mishka probably thought it looked like a magician’s promo photo because, well, it looks like a magician’s promo photo. The real question is why I thought it looked like an excellent photo of me. And it turns out the answer is narcissism, which is much stronger than had previously been believed. A couple of recent studies have shown just how strong the Narcissus-effect can be, and how incredibly shallow and “lookist” we all are. I assume that you are already aware that attractive people earn more money on average than identically-qualified people rated as less attractive, and that more attractive (male) professors also receive higher evaluation scores on average than similarly qualified less attractive faculty. And obviously, people retouch their pictures, pad up their résumés, and lie like crazy when they create personal dating service profiles. And of course you knew that people seek out romantic partners with similar features, right down to the shape of their earlobes, right? These two new studies indicate just how insidious narcissism is, however.

The first set of studies, which have been replicated and expanded in various interesting ways, shows how attached people are to their own names. It turns out that if your name begins with the letter T you are statistically more likely to live in Tacoma than in San Diego (yes, yes, adjusting for the relative frequency of T-based place names and the letter T at the start of a name). This isn’t a huge effect, but it appears than when all else is equal, people may gravitate toward place names that remind them of themselves. But more surprising was a study (here’s the whole thing) that’s been duplicated several times showing that people also gravitate toward professions that are similar to their own names as well. There are a disproportionate number of dentists name Dennis and Denise, for example, and lawyers named Laura or Lauren. Again, the effect is not huge, but it is visible and persistent: we like everything about ourselves, including the arbitrary letters that make up our initials. Hence Rob Blagojevitch and Anthony Sutcliffe are real characters—in the unconscious.

The second recent study (that I cannot find a link for, damnit) is one in which participants had to pick out a picture of someone they had seen before out of an array of random strangers’ photos. They were timed to see how quickly they could do it (speed generally indicates how easy something is). Surprisingly, even for a face they had only seen once before (the researchers would show the participant the photo of a middle-aged man and say “This is Bob. Can you find the picture of Bob in this array?”), participants could find the face more quickly if it had been retouched to make the face more attractive. (Simple stuff like increasing facial symmetry, removing blemishes, reducing wrinkles.) And here’s the real kicker—participants also could pick out their own photos from an array of strange faces more quickly when their own photo had been retouched.

Think about that for a minute. This is the face that you know best in the entire world, the one you have seen and studied most carefully. Presumably it is the face that you should recognize the most quickly, but also the one whose flaws you know most deeply. We’ve all had the experience of having, say, a pimple that looked to us like the size of a small island but inexplicably seemed to be nearly invisible to everyone else. But we’d like to imagine our face as more beautiful and perfect than it really is, and that deep-seated belief that I am more handsome than I am allows me to pick out the retouched picture instantly: that’s me! Finally, the me that looks like the me I’m always imagining in my head! And that me has a decent tan, very blue eyes and a rugged jawline, it turns out. Now I just need a pool, a crown of laurel leaves and a half-naked woman pining for me.