People See Themselves More Beautiful in the Mirror Than They Actually Are, Study Finds

A study explains that we often imagine ourselves more attractive than we really are not.

Looking in the mirror is a daily ritual. It is what gives us an image of ourselves and what we look like every day. It is often the reference vision, compared to that of photos, for example. But is it faithful to reality? ? Not really, and it is not linked to a distortion by mirrors, but to self and how you see your own body.

That's according to Nicholas Epley, a professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago. “The interesting thing is, people don't really know what they look like. The image you have of yourself in your mind is not quite the same as what's actually there,” he said. from The Atlantic. This finding comes from a study published in Sage Journals, with Erin Whitchurch, from the University of Virginia. For this one, the two researchers tested the extent to which participants recognized their real faces. Their faces were made more or less attractive to using morphing software, in increments of 10%.

The volunteers then had to decide which image was the original, between the identical one of their face, the modified shots to be more attractive, and others that were less flattering. When they had to identify the unmodified image, the majority of them tended to choose an improved version of their portrait.

Most of them actually opted for for a face made to look 20% more attractive than it actually is. The people who were most likely to see themselves as more attractive than they actually are are also those who have the most self-confidence, the correlation study shows. Scientists explain that this choice is not made consciously, but is rather linked to “implicit measures of self-esteem, but not to explicit measures, which is consistent with the fact that this variety of improvement is a relatively automatic rather than deliberate process. “Unintentionally, it is therefore also a way of fostering one's self-confidence.

The same observation was made when it came to the face of a friend, but not for that of a stranger. For a stranger, the guinea pigs managed to find the photo without artifice, thus demonstrating more clairvoyance. "You are an expert on your own face, but that does not mean you are perfect at recognizing it," Epley said.