My first thought on reading this was that given that people tend to be overconfident in just about every other area of their lives, I would find it exceedingly surprising if it were in fact the case that people’s estimates of their own attractiveness was systematically lower than the estimates of others. I notice that there isn’t actually a citation for this claim anywhere in the article.
Our results show proof for a strikingly simple observation: that individuals perceive their own beauty to be greater than that expressed in the opinions of others (p < 0.001).
In other words, the phenomenon that you “explain” in this article is literally the opposite of the truth, at least for the people in that study.
Your strength as a rationalist is your ability to be more confused by fiction than by reality. Yes, surely some people under-estimate their own attractiveness, but if the explanation for this is cognitive biases which are present in everyone, how do we explain the people in this study who make exactly the opposite error? If you are equally good at explaining any outcome, you have zero knowledge, etc, etc.
Additionally, it was suggested during editing (though I did leave it out) that I talk about the mere-exposure effect, where people like what’s familiar.
A full understanding of all the factors going into self-perception would include things which contribute to AND detract from a positive self-perception, with mere-exposure and other effects biasing the answer up, and excessive attention to flaws and probably other phenomena biasing the answer down.
I might imagine we end up with a “net” self-perception, an amalgamation of all the effects. For some people, that net perception might be biased up. Indeed, while I’m very hesitant to draw too many conclusions from the study you provide from the 1800′s, it is POSSIBLE that the majority of people have a net self-perception biased up.
Still leaving millions of people, several of whom I know, who could benefit from the ideas in this article, I think.
And if I had to guess, in 1878, people, on average, were probably more satisfied with their appearance than we are now.
My model of this is based only on the several people which I’m close enough to to get accurate reports about their private thoughts.
I have high confidence in their reports being as true to the internal experiences as they managed to communicate, but the sample is small and might not reflect the “average”.
Based on this, I make the following bold claim (with moderate confidence):
The bias in question works by a sort of a doublethink: the subjects do in fact also have a roughly accurate estimate of their beauty somewhere in their heads, and when asked publicly, they will not report their inner experience of doubt.
If you ask a bunch of people who have issues with self-perception of beauty to fill a survey about it, they will tend to answer the questions by taking the “outsider view” (at least, unless the questions in the survey are very cleverly phrased).
I know someone who self-perceives below how others perceive them, but who, when pressed, accurately predicts that they will be found attractive by most people.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t keep the negative self-perception (whatever level they believe it on) from making them feel bad
My first thought on reading this was that given that people tend to be overconfident in just about every other area of their lives, I would find it exceedingly surprising if it were in fact the case that people’s estimates of their own attractiveness was systematically lower than the estimates of others. I notice that there isn’t actually a citation for this claim anywhere in the article.
Indeed, having looked for some evidence, this was the first study I could find that attempted to investigate the claim directly: Mirror, mirror on the wall…: self-perception of facial beauty versus judgement by others.. To quote the abstract:
In other words, the phenomenon that you “explain” in this article is literally the opposite of the truth, at least for the people in that study.
Your strength as a rationalist is your ability to be more confused by fiction than by reality. Yes, surely some people under-estimate their own attractiveness, but if the explanation for this is cognitive biases which are present in everyone, how do we explain the people in this study who make exactly the opposite error? If you are equally good at explaining any outcome, you have zero knowledge, etc, etc.
Additionally, it was suggested during editing (though I did leave it out) that I talk about the mere-exposure effect, where people like what’s familiar.
A full understanding of all the factors going into self-perception would include things which contribute to AND detract from a positive self-perception, with mere-exposure and other effects biasing the answer up, and excessive attention to flaws and probably other phenomena biasing the answer down.
I might imagine we end up with a “net” self-perception, an amalgamation of all the effects. For some people, that net perception might be biased up. Indeed, while I’m very hesitant to draw too many conclusions from the study you provide from the 1800′s, it is POSSIBLE that the majority of people have a net self-perception biased up.
Still leaving millions of people, several of whom I know, who could benefit from the ideas in this article, I think.
And if I had to guess, in 1878, people, on average, were probably more satisfied with their appearance than we are now.
OK, first a disclaimer.
My model of this is based only on the several people which I’m close enough to to get accurate reports about their private thoughts.
I have high confidence in their reports being as true to the internal experiences as they managed to communicate, but the sample is small and might not reflect the “average”.
Based on this, I make the following bold claim (with moderate confidence):
The bias in question works by a sort of a doublethink: the subjects do in fact also have a roughly accurate estimate of their beauty somewhere in their heads, and when asked publicly, they will not report their inner experience of doubt.
If you ask a bunch of people who have issues with self-perception of beauty to fill a survey about it, they will tend to answer the questions by taking the “outsider view” (at least, unless the questions in the survey are very cleverly phrased).
My experience might add a little support to that.
I know someone who self-perceives below how others perceive them, but who, when pressed, accurately predicts that they will be found attractive by most people.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t keep the negative self-perception (whatever level they believe it on) from making them feel bad