My model of this is based only on the several people which I’m close enough to to get accurate reports about their private thoughts.
I have high confidence in their reports being as true to the internal experiences as they managed to communicate, but the sample is small and might not reflect the “average”.
Based on this, I make the following bold claim (with moderate confidence):
The bias in question works by a sort of a doublethink: the subjects do in fact also have a roughly accurate estimate of their beauty somewhere in their heads, and when asked publicly, they will not report their inner experience of doubt.
If you ask a bunch of people who have issues with self-perception of beauty to fill a survey about it, they will tend to answer the questions by taking the “outsider view” (at least, unless the questions in the survey are very cleverly phrased).
I know someone who self-perceives below how others perceive them, but who, when pressed, accurately predicts that they will be found attractive by most people.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t keep the negative self-perception (whatever level they believe it on) from making them feel bad
OK, first a disclaimer.
My model of this is based only on the several people which I’m close enough to to get accurate reports about their private thoughts.
I have high confidence in their reports being as true to the internal experiences as they managed to communicate, but the sample is small and might not reflect the “average”.
Based on this, I make the following bold claim (with moderate confidence):
The bias in question works by a sort of a doublethink: the subjects do in fact also have a roughly accurate estimate of their beauty somewhere in their heads, and when asked publicly, they will not report their inner experience of doubt.
If you ask a bunch of people who have issues with self-perception of beauty to fill a survey about it, they will tend to answer the questions by taking the “outsider view” (at least, unless the questions in the survey are very cleverly phrased).
My experience might add a little support to that.
I know someone who self-perceives below how others perceive them, but who, when pressed, accurately predicts that they will be found attractive by most people.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t keep the negative self-perception (whatever level they believe it on) from making them feel bad