Am I good-looking?
This is a question we’ve all asked ourselves.
When we look in the mirror, most of us answer this question with an emphatic “no”.
Occasionally our self-confidence will receive a quick boost when a good looking guy/girl looks at us at the street or a friend tells you how beautiful you are.
But this generally doesn’t last long and we’re back to self-loathing about our own looks.
According to psychologist Gleb Tsipursky, we’re all self-conscious and everyone has a natural tendency to judge their own appearance more harshly than they do others.
But why?
I’m sure you’ve heard most people blame the media and the narrow standard of beauty it imposes.
While it’s true that research has found that the media negatively affects how we judge both ourselves and others, it doesn’t actually explain why we judge ourselves more harshly than others.
But according to psychologist Gleb Tsipursky, there are 2 reasons we judge ourselves harshly:
Gleb Tsipursky says it’s a combination of two things:
1) Our looks are very important to us.
Other people’s beauty doesn’t affect our life as much.
2) We know our looks better than others do.
When we look at others, we have no real reason to pay attention to their good or bad parts or judge them in anyway. Contrast that to how we see ourselves. It matters to us. We believe it affects how people perceive us and judge us. So of course, we have more reason to pay attention to our own looks.
So what do we pay attention to? Our good points or bad points? According to research, we focus on the bad points because of a popular psychological theory we explain below.
This psychology theory is why you judge yourself harshly
A psychology theory called “loss aversion” says that humans hate losing even more than we love winning.
Gleb Tsipursky explains it best:
“Say someone gives you $1000. They say you can either lose $400 of it now, or try to hold on to it all, 50-50 odds to keep it all or lose it all. What would you do? Well, studies show about 61% of people in this situation choose to gamble on keeping everything over a sure loss. Then suppose you get a second deal. You can either keep $600 of your $1000 now, or you can risk losing it all, 50-50 odds again. What would you do? People tend to like keeping the $600 more in this deal, only 43% tend to gamble. Do you see the trick? Losing $400 out of $1000 is the same thing as keeping $600 out of $1000!”
Even when it doesn’t make sense, we avoid the potential of a loss because it hurts us so bad.
So, when it comes to our looks, given the choice, would we pay attention to what could make us look good, or to what could make us look bad?
Because we’re more afraid of what could make us lose in terms of our looks, we focus on our negative points.
Gleb Tsipursky says that we check ALL of our flaws when we look in the mirror and the balanced beauty assessment we give others is lost when we view ourselves.
Plus, our flaws have our attention which now becomes more important than what you’re not paying attention to. In psychology, this is called attentional bias.
It’s a fact that if you spend more time examining your flaws, and little time appreciating your good points, the flaws will stick out in your mind.
Since others don’t have the ability to criticize us like we can, and they don’t have any reason to pay attention to our flaws, other people’s assessment of us is more balanced.
So, how can we achieve a more, natural balanced view of our looks?
It’s a tough question, considering that even the most beautiful people can sometimes be down about their own looks.
According to psychologist Gleb Tsipursky, we simply need to make an effort to pay attention to our good points. Appreciate what you like about yourself and overtime, you’ll begin to see yourself with a natural balance that others see you with
The post A Psychologist Explains Why You’re Probably More Attractive Than You Think You Are appeared first on WildNotice.
