You Don’t Really Know What You Look Like, Reveals Professor

Our One And Only

Our body is the only one we ever get. Same goes for our face, it's the one we develop as we grow and the only one we'll come to know as the years go by. We look at ourselves every day, checking our appearance in the mirror, so you'd think we know what we look like by now, right? Sure, it changes as we age, but we get a good feel for it, right?

Really think, though. Have you ever looked at yourself in the mirror, then looked at a selfie taken on your phone and thought that you looked like two different people? Could it be that you don't know your face as well as you thought?

Not Quite Right

Nicholas Epley, a professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, says that no, you don't actually know your own face that well. When speaking to The Atlantic, he said, "The interesting thing is that 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 actually exists."

He and researcher Erin Whitchurch conducted a study regarding this phenomenon in 2008, the findings published in Sage Journals. The study involved participants doing a series of experiments to see how well they knew their own face.

Do You Know Yourself?

For each experiment, the participant had to look at photos of themself that had been digitally altered, making them "more of less attractive using a morphing procedure" that went up and down in 10% increments. The 'attractiveness' of an edit was based on factors like facial symmetry.

These photos were then presented in a lineup, and the participant was asked to pick the original photo, meaning their actual face, from the bunch. As it turns out, most of the participants couldn't identify their true faces.

Confidence In Apperance

Not only that, but most of them chose the faces that were edited to be more attractive. The most common election was the fact that it was made 20% more attractive via editing.

The conclusion from this was that people tend to see themselves as more attractive as they are. But don't let that 20% jump fool you or make you feel insecure. Epley noted in the report that even the 20% edits weren't "wildly off" and it didn't mean that you "think you look like Brad Pitt."

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We Still Know Best

In fact, this study proved that we tend to see our friends as generally more attractive, too. The only faces we're good at identifying neutrally are those of strangers. As the study explains, "This enhancement bias occurred for both one's own face and a friend's face but not for a relative stranger's face."

That doesn't mean you have no idea what you look like at all, though. You still know yourself! Epley put it best at the end of the study when he wrote, "You're an expert at your own face, but that doesn’t mean you’re perfect at recognizing it."

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