oh god, i'm ugly and i didn't even know it

Fortunately everyone else is also blissfully deceived, ignorant of their own hideousness, or at least according to the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/22/science/22angi.html

Particularly fascinating to me is this passage: For that matter, humans do not necessarily see the face in the mirror either. In a report titled “Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Enhancement in Self-Recognition,” which appears online in The Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Nicholas Epley and Erin Whitchurch described experiments in which people were asked to identify pictures of themselves amid a lineup of distracter faces. Participants identified their personal portraits significantly quicker when their faces were computer enhanced to be 20 percent more attractive. They were also likelier, when presented with images of themselves made prettier, homelier or left untouched, to call the enhanced image their genuine, unairbrushed face. Such internalized photoshoppery is not simply the result of an all-purpose preference for prettiness: when asked to identify images of strangers in subsequent rounds of testing, participants were best at spotting the unenhanced faces.

The rest of the article, which tells us that we incorrectly think the image in the mirror is equal in size to our actual self and gets smaller as we step back (the reflection is actually half the size of the actual body part and does not change size), is less interesting to me. But the scientific finding that we all think we're hotter than we actually are is both fascinating and hilarious. It lends a potential solution to the mystery of why people think they look ugly and unlike themselves in pictures (inevitably leading to several more futile attempts at capturing their alleged beauty): they are actually just uglier than they think. Unfortunately, this means I must be ugly, too, and knowing that I have plenty of company among the falsely self-confident is little solace. But there may be a solution to this worldwide invasion of ugly: put mirrors everywhere. According to the article, one study found that "subjects tested in a room with a mirror have been found to work harder, to be more helpful and to be less inclined to cheat, compared with control groups," and another discovered that "people in a room with a mirror were comparatively less likely to judge others based on social stereotypes about, for example, sex, race or religion." Great! We'll all be attractive, honest, efficient, fair, and politically correct if we just line our sidewalks and buildings with mirrors. As an added bonus, we could use those mirrors to generate and even store electricity using solar technology as per the latest developments. More important than solving the energy crisis, though, is the promise that I will once again feel confident leaving my house without a bag over my head. Hmmm, maybe I can qualify for a MacArthur genius grant with this...