Our face is someone else's: why we look different in the photo

A person can look at himself in the mirror for years and at the same time be surprised to see his own face in a photo. The reason is not only in the wrong angle or lighting: the mirror shows an inverted image, the camera captures a particular moment, and the brain forms its own idea of what a face should look like. About why we perceive ourselves differently in the mirror, in photographs and through the eyes of other people, in the material "Izvestia".

Why do we see a familiar version of ourselves in the mirror?

The first difference between a mirror and a photograph is that the mirror changes the position of the facial features from left to right. For most people, this difference is almost invisible when looking at another person, but we see our own face in this form regularly. At the same time, a person's face is usually not perfectly symmetrical: one eye may be slightly higher than the other, one side of the mouth may differ from the other, and the eyebrows may have slightly different shapes.

As a result, a person gets used to a certain configuration of his own face for years. In psychology, this effect is associated with the principle of familiarity: what we encounter more often can be perceived as more familiar and comfortable.

Back in 1977, researchers Theodore Mita, Marshall Dermer, and Jeffrey Knight tested this idea experimentally. The study, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, involved 33 female students and their close friends. Each participant was shown two images of her own face — an ordinary one and a mirror-inverted one. The women themselves were more likely to choose the mirror version, while their girlfriends were more likely to prefer the regular image.

It turns out a paradox: the version of one's own face that seems more "correct" to a person may be unusual for others. They regularly see a person exactly as they look without a mirror image.

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Why photography also changes our perception of the face

However, the difference between a mirror and a photograph is not limited to the inversion of the image. In the mirror, a person sees himself in motion: he changes his facial expression, turns his head, chooses the distance and angle from which he looks at the reflection. Photography, on the contrary, captures one specific moment. The result is also influenced by the distance to the camera, the focal length of the lens, and the lighting. Therefore, even a photo that does not turn the face over is not an exact copy of how a person looks in everyday life.

This was shown by a study published in the journal The Laryngoscope. The scientists photographed 12 people using a smartphone and a digital SLR camera, changing the distance to the object and the focal length. When shooting with a smartphone from a distance of 8 inches — about 20 cm — the researchers found 18% more vertical distortion of the middle part of the face compared to the control image taken from a distance of 60 inches. At a distance of 12 inches, the distortion was 12%.

Thus, a close shot can really noticeably change the visual proportions of a face. This is especially true for selfies when the camera is at a short distance away. However, it's not necessarily that the camera "shows the real face," but that the mirror supposedly distorts it. Both methods give a real image of a person, but they do it in different conditions.

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How does the brain even represent its own face?

There is also a deeper reason why a photograph may seem alien: a person does not get constant visual access to their face from the outside. He forms an idea of it from reflections, photographs, videos, and individual observations. This representation does not necessarily completely match the physical image of the face. Research shows that one's own face has a special status for a person: it is easier to recognize it than the faces of other people, and the idea of it can be quite flexible.

In 2008, researchers studied how accurately people recognize their own face. The results were published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. The researchers created a series of images in which the photos of the participants were gradually changed towards greater or lesser attractiveness, and then asked to identify their own face among the options.

Participants were more likely to choose a version that was slightly more attractive than their original photo. However, the effect was related to unconscious measures of self-esteem, rather than how participants consciously assessed themselves. The authors described this as a kind of improvement in self-perception: a person can recognize a slightly improved version of his own face as his own.

This does not mean that a person consciously considers himself more beautiful than he really is. Rather, the results show that the representation of one's own face can include not only an accurate visual match, but also features of how a person perceives himself.

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Why can we recognize ourselves even in an altered face?

Later work has shown how flexible such a representation can be. The study, published in PLOS One, involved 30 women between the ages of 18 and 24. The participants were shown images created by mixing their own faces with the faces of unknown women who performed cosmetic procedures using lip fillers or cheeks. The images were presented for 500 or 2,000 ms, after which the participants had to determine whether they were seeing their own face or the face of another person.

When presented briefly, the researchers found a tendency towards self-identification: participants were more likely to perceive the mixed image as their own. With longer viewing, this trend shifted towards identification with another person. The authors attribute the result to the flexibility of representing one's own face. However, they separately note that the study does not show that people in general have a "more beautiful portrait" of themselves in their heads.

That is, the internal image of one's own face may not be a photographically accurate template, but a more flexible system that allows one to recognize oneself even when the image contains noticeable information about another person.

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Why don't we know exactly what we look like from the outside?

Another paradox arises here: a person can recognize his own face quite well, but at the same time not have a full idea of how it looks to others. In the mirror, we see ourselves from a familiar perspective. In the photo — in one particular position. In the video, in motion, but still through the screen.

At the same time, in ordinary communication, others perceive not a single frame, but a face in three-dimensional space: a person changes expression, turns, talks, smiles and moves. Therefore, it is impossible to reduce a person's appearance to a single photograph. Even a series of pictures will show only individual moments, and not a continuous perception of the face by another person.

In addition, others are initially accustomed to the version of the face that a person himself may perceive as unusual. Cazzato notes that almost all faces have some asymmetry, so an unturned photo may seem strange to the person himself precisely because of the change in the relative position of the features.

It turns out that a person can open a photo, see an unusual position of the eyes, eyebrows or mouth lines and decide which looks worse on it. But the surrounding person, who constantly sees the face in this form, may not perceive this feature as something unusual at all.

What is the most real image of a person then?

Neither a mirror nor a photograph gives a completely objective answer to the question of how a person looks to others. The mirror turns the image over and shows it in dynamic interaction with the person himself. Photography does not turn the face over, but captures a specific moment, angle, lighting, and perspective. The video adds motion, but it still remains an image on a flat screen.

Therefore, the feeling of "I don't look like this at all" after viewing a photo may not arise because the camera unexpectedly revealed some hidden truth. A person compares a photograph with an already existing internal image of their own face, which is formed primarily from familiar reflections, photographs, and other fragments of visual experience. That's why the version of yourself that a person sees in a mirror may seem more natural, and a photo may seem strange. For the person himself, one face configuration is more familiar, while others constantly see another.

Ultimately, a person does not have a single visual version of himself. There is a face that he sees in the mirror, a face in photographs, a face in motion, and an inner image of his own appearance. They all relate to the same person, but they are formed in different conditions of perception.