Most the time I’ll look in the mirror and be like “hey, I don’t look too bad today” but when I go to take a photo, I hate the way I look in it. Why?
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It’s a psychological phenomenon called mere exposure effect. Basically meaning that you find someone more attractive the more you are used to them. And this also applies to you seeing yourself in the mirror vs seeing yourself on a photo.
partially because the lighting around many mirrors is designed to be flattering to your reflection
In the mirror, our image is reflected. When we see photos, we are seeing ourselves the completely opposite way which can sometimes makes us feel like we look very different
These other answers are questionable, but It’s because a mirror is a 1:1 reflection, and a photograph is not that, it’s an image focused through any number of different types of lenses. The selfie cam on your phone for instance can sometimes give a “funhouse mirror” effect and distort your features, making you nose look up to 30% wider than normal for instance.
There is a fun story I recently had which explains this reallly well.
Me and my girlfriend were in an Illusion Museum. There was some kind of mirror with the text saying you will see true yourself in it. I heard my girlfriend saying “oh my God, my face looks so bad”. She was so shocked. At first I thought this mirror is deforming or something. But I came to her and saw her look totally normal but she was so terrified. My first reaction was “what the fuck” but then I realised that this mirror doesnt work like normal mirror, but it flips the reflection. So she saw what she would see on a photo. She saw what I see her like everyday. I also didnt like my face when I looked into this mirror.
It is simply because we are used to our looks in the mirror. Flipping it make us look different thus we think we look weird and bad.
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