According to a study by researchers at the University of Toronto, people who take a lot of selfies tend to believe they look more attractive and are more likeable than they really are. For their study they asked 198 undergraduates to rate how attractive they looked in selfies and then in photos of them that were taken by others. They then asked 178 volunteers to also rank both sets of photos.
What they found was that those who had taken the selfies believed they looked more attractive and likeable than in photos of them taken by other people when in fact, the people rating the pictures thought the opposite. In other words, people tend to think they look better in their selfies than outsiders do.
This kind of makes sense though– it’s not surprising that people think they look better in a picture that they’ve been able to control and curate and people are often uncomfortable about pictures that have been taken of them and may be more likely to notice flaws.
As well as that, there's the negative association that surrounds selfies: that the selfie-taker is assumed to be more narcissistic or arrogant which, because these aren't typically attractive traits in a person, is bound to make people rate them as less attractive.
But what's wrong with thinking you look good in a selfie? Absolutely nothing. In fact, lets celebrate the fact that people reckon they look alright in their selfies because we need more of that positivity. So you carrying on taking those selfies if that's what you want to do; we think you look ace.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.