I am talking abut body shape and mainly facial features.
When i think of myself i dont think of me as the person i see in the mirror. I have a different view of how i appear to others and it is rose tinted.
I presume this is the same with others, having read somewhere that it is a human affliction.
So why do we not see ourselves the way others see us in the flesh.
Because as Morpheus’ points out, what you are seeing is residual self image…it is, to paraphrase from the Matrix, the mental projection of your digital self…
I figure it’s because my eyeballs are inside my head looking away from me, instead of in someone else’s head looking *at *me.
I suppose if I could physically locate my eyeballs across the room from myself…
With me it’s obviously that the memory of myself as a youth got impressed in my mind by living with myself for all the years of my youth.
I say “obviously” because I was quite thin throughout my youth and teenage years, but now I’m very heavy. Despite a decade and a half of seeing a fat person in the mirror, it’s still a surprise to see, and I still both feel thin and misjudge the space I require. So yeah, you are most likely seeing yourself as you were when you were younger.
I think that’s called “looking in a mirror”.
Okay, yeah, mirrors do horizontal reversal, but if you’re really concerned about that you just need to put two mirrors at a ninety degree angle to one another and look into the ‘corner’. Then you’ll be able to completely experience seeing yourself as others see you.
And it won’t change your self-visual-image much.
A personal paradox:
I tend to think of myself as better-looking than I actually am.
I tend to assume that other people have a more negative opinion of my looks than they actually do.
Lack of perspective.
Because we can only see ourselves two-dimensional (in pictures or in a mirror), and we are actually three-dimensional. Even if you see yourself on video, you’re seeing a flattened, distorted version. The only way you could see yourself as others see you is to be a life-sized sculpture, a wax statue at Madame Tussaud’s, or a Disney animatronic figure.
Your image in a mirror is 2d? Not really. though there was an interesting show on RadioLab about how merely flipping your image can have serious changes in perception due to subconscious left-right biases we tend to have.
The real answer is, because of all the emotions and memories we have attached to our self image. You know how that old toy/girlfriend/house you used to have looks better to you? Same thing. And you should know that you are wrong to think everyone has a rose tinted version of themselves in their head. Many have an overly negative version.
That’s brilliant and intersects with my own experiences when i feel a slight depression at looking at a celebrity and think “Ahh man THEY got old.”…and it’s not so bad that they got old, but the depressing part is that they won’t ever be young again, and that they will in fact die some day.
I won’t!! I’ll live forever. Course it’s going to suck when i cant understand the slightest thing that youths are into, or why they find the stupid stuff funny that they do. And how I have to keep my mouth shut around them at all times, because they don’t have the slightest clue to my cultural references.
And let’s not even get into the WORDS i cant say any more…ahh sweet death cant come soon enough now that I think about it.
A mirror is two-dimensional because it is FLAT. There is an illusion of depth, but it is a FLAT surface, hence two dimensions.
If I look at a reflection of an apple in a mirror, I can slip that mirror into a flat envelope. I can’t slip an apple into a flat envelope. Two dimensions v. three dimensions.
The OP’s question was “why don’t we see ourselves PHYSICALLY as others do?” Our emotional sense of how we look is a completely different question.
The answer is because others see us fully rounded with real (not illusory) depth. We never see ourselves this way unless someone sculpts a three-dimensional representation of us.
The image you see in a mirror is not on the plane of the mirror - If you follow the light rays that fall into your eye from the mirror, the appear to originate from a virtual copy of you that is as far behind the mirror plane as you are in front of the mirror.
It’s an illusion, not actually three-dimensional. You cannot see yourself as fully rounded and THREE-dimensional in a mirror. I’ve made my point and am now outta here. Cheers.
Your point is wrong.
Of course it’s an illusion - there’s not actually a second reversed person standing in a second reversed room looking back at you through the glass on the mirror. However, it’s a three-dimensional illusion, because the images delivered to your eyes are three-dimensional - exactly as three-dimensional as anything else you’ve seen in real life. It’s even delivered to your eyes in the exact same way that “real” three-dimensional images of reality are delivered (unlike, say, 3D movies). So yes, it’s an illusion, but images in mirrors are also truly three-dimensional.
Actually I lied before. Most mirrors are simple reflective surfaces, but the mirror in your bathroom actually is just a sheet of glass with a reversed room and another person behind it. They’re just waiting for the right time to break the glass, jump through, and kill you. Tip: Don’t turn your back.
But from that point of view none of us view the world in three dimensions because our Retinas are two dimensional. As Anaglyph points out, the visual stimulus you get from a reflected image is identical to what you would get from a real 3D object set an equal distance beyond the surface of the mirror.
However, one big difference between reflected images and real images is that most people see themselves straight front view, I rarely see the bald spot forming on the top of my head, or the bulbous pot belly that is obvious in profile.
The problem that I have in terms of viewing myself objectively is that when I look in a mirror I don’t see a man attractive or otherwise I see me. The same it true for anyone else that I am close to. I don’t see a woman, I see my wife or my mother, and so its difficult for me to re-categorize the person into a something that can be objectively compared with a generic stranger.
Is this not universal? I tend to picture myself at about 25 or so (I’m over 60) in spite of constant unpleasant reminders from the mirror. On the other hand, I didn’t think I was all that at 25 so am surprised at any positive feedback these days.
I tend to view myself as a cross between a dwarf and a hobbit with a bit of troll mixed in.
I kind of think this is the opposite of your effect?
I kind of think others agree with my perspective though
It can just as easily go the other way. A slim, attractive person can be convinced that they are fat and ugly despite all evidence to the contrary.
Does everyone think they’re ugly? Even those who are revered for their good looks since birth? Are people who are confident in their looks merely pretending to be?