Why do you like your own mirror image but hate your photo image?

by sychosomat

It is an extension of the mere-exposure effect/hypothesis. Very basically, it states that the more you see or hear something, the more you like it. Because we see our "reflected" image far more than our "photo" image, we subjectively like it more.

Here is one study from the literature that found support for the hypothesis - Reversed facial images and the mere-exposure hypothesis. (Warning: possible pay-wall for full article, abstract can be viewed by anyone however).

As a summary, the abstract states that they took 33 female college students and a close female friend (in study 1) or a lover (study 2) and had them rate a picture of the participant as well as an image like one that the participant would see in a mirror as well as a "true" picture, like one would see in a photo/real-life. As the researchers hypothesized, the participant rated their "mirror" image as preferable, while their friend/lover rated their "photo" image as preferable, supporting the mere-exposure hypothesis.

For those behind the paywall: In study 1, the participant preferred their mirror print 21-12, the friend preferred the photo print 20 to 13. In study 2, (different as instead of friends, the girls identified and brought lovers) the participant preferred their mirror print 20-8, the lover preferred the photo print 17-11 (only 28 continued in the study). Note that by the statistics, the difference between lovers and friends in their preference of the photo image is non-significant.

I also wonder if beyond simply mere-exposure, some element of self-image is involved. People may self-identify with their mirror images far more than their photo images and thus become disconcerted when seeing themselves "looking wrong" due to the reflection of the minor imperfections in symmetry most of our faces contain. Pure speculation on my part if this cognitive connection exists, however, so take it with a grain of salt.

As a note to anyone interested, google has a great academic search function called Google scholar (http://scholar.google.com). You may only get access to abstracts, but it is a great first source to go to beyond wikipedia.