You Are Less Beautiful Than You Think

Yes that was pretty obvious looking at the Ad. People are very less likely to criticize other people's appearance before a camera especially in a country like US where people tend to be ridiculously politically correct.

My first reaction to the article title: "Yes, probably, but I prefer it stays this way"

If I'm uglier than I already think I am, I'm in trouble.

You're exactly right. When I try to make myself look attractive, I aspire to my own standards (and my wife's). When others try to make themselves look attractive, they aspire to their different standards. We modify a lot of things about our own looks, which may not be as blatant as hair dye: clothing, hairstyle, makeup, facial hair, eyewear, and of course our own facial expressions. This means others have a lot of opportunity to boost themselves according to their standards, and penalize themselves according to mine.

Likewise, I'm more likely to have a "good life" than others by my own definition. I'm more likely to be "educated" than others in the fields which I consider education important. I'm more likely to find the "right balance" between work and family, or between present and future, or between hope and realism, because I'm aspiring to exactly the point which I consider "right".

Generally, people tend to do better according to their own standards than others' standards, and are thus more likely to be "above average".

>The same morphing procedure was applied to a picture of a stranger, whom the study participant met three weeks earlier during an unrelated study. Participants tended to select the unmodified picture of the stranger.

This is the dumbest reasoning I can fathom if they wanted to prove that others think we are less attractive. All it proved is that other people have a good memory of what we look like.

They should have done this the opposite way. (Show the stranger an ugly-morphed version of the person's face and the regular version, if they chose the uglier version it would prove they remembered them as being uglier than they saw them originally.)

All they proved in that study is that the majority of humans have a good memory and that we WANT to look more attractive than we actually are. We don't think it, not most of us anyways, but we sure want to look better. When you show us a good picture and bad picture of ourselves and ask us to choose, we're going to pick the good looking one without a doubt.

"Oh yea, the one with the buckteeth and zits over there is me!"