How we really rate our looks | Life and style | The Guardian

Hot or not? How we really rate our looks | Life and style | The Guardian

• We have a deep-seated need to feel good about ourselves and we naturally employ a number of self-enhancing (to use the psychological terminology) strategies to achieve this. 
• Nicholas Epley study : Rather than have people simply rate their beauty compared with others, he asked them to identify an original photograph of themselves from a lineup including versions that had been morphed to appear more and less attractive. Visual recognition, reads the study, is "an automatic psychological process, occurring rapidly and intuitively with little or no apparent conscious deliberation". If the subjects quickly chose a falsely flattering image ? which most did ? they genuinely believed it was really how they looked.
• "I don't think the findings that we have are any evidence of personal delusion," says Epley. "It's a reflection simply of people generally thinking well of themselves." If you are depressed, you won't be self-enhancing.
• another study found that admiring one's own Facebook profile has palpable self-affirming effects, and that people naturally gravitate to Facebook for a boost when their ego has been knocked. 
• This is why people spend more time on Facebook after a hard day or something bad happening ? because it reassures you that you're connected, that you have interesting activities and hobbies, photographs, etc." However, despite this positive emotional benefit, research has also shown that we can easily overlook the extent to which others embellish their profiles, and feel sad because our real lives aren't as good as others' appear.