You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

Bound_up comments on Cognitive Biases Affecting Self-Perception of Beauty - Less Wrong Discussion

0 Post author: Bound_up 29 May 2016 06:32PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (33)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: SquirrelInHell 30 May 2016 01:43:47AM 1 point [-]

Yes, it's a thing.

And I think the bias occurs when interacting with videos/photos/mirror reflections/etc. of yourself, not just the "first person" view.

My theory is that we have a evolutionary anti-bias that only works with the "fist person" view, that prevents us from disparaging our own looks in that case.

~~~~

Your proposed fix seems... not enough. Let's think more about how to solve this.

(E.g. I know about some good effects from a "desanitizing" approach in similar areas, like judging your own voice recordings, maybe it could also be applied here.)

Comment author: Bound_up 30 May 2016 03:38:58AM 1 point [-]

The solution described is designed only to counter the attentional bias caused by loss aversion.

If there are other causes contributing to a similar effect, I wouldn't expect the included solution to address them also just by luck.

Is there any research on the "first person" view that you mention? As I'm no scientist, I've only dealt with the already firmly established findings like loss aversion.

Comment author: SquirrelInHell 31 May 2016 01:58:25AM *  0 points [-]

Is there any research on the "first person" view that you mention? As I'm no scientist, I've only dealt with the already firmly established findings like loss aversion.

I do not know of any research on this directly. However, there is strong support for people's reported opinions being influenced by sitting in front of a mirror. So I just do educated guesses from the tangentially related research.

I've only dealt with the already firmly established findings like loss aversion.

Yup - you are playing it safe. However, this does not satisfy my curiosity.

You quote negativity/loss aversion bias as an explanation, but do you think it is the most accurate explanation?

Comment author: Bound_up 31 May 2016 03:06:21PM 0 points [-]

Hmm...I would be open to an alternative.

But what I've got in mind is: if someone were suddenly to acquire an extra 100 flaws, this would indeed be a loss; they would feel worse walking down the street as people glance at them, they would lose social status, people would judge them as less honest, kind, intelligent, etc.

So they are losing social status and they're losing other people thinking well of their appearance, and like any other loss will tend to fear it more than they would value gains of equal size.

And that's what people DO experience, in a less dramatic way. You could say, perhaps, that it's because we have the ability to alter our appearance that the problem exists, because sometimes we look better than at other times, and we'll tend to focus on the flaws that make the difference.