This week’s big psychology headline: “Selfie-Takers More Likely to Overestimate Their Attractiveness, Study Finds”.
Okay, I get it; this headline is likely to be a “dog bites man” story, at least for most of us. I mean why would people keep taking their own pictures if they thought that they didn’t look pretty good in them, right? And that is what a new study reported by PsyPost concludes. It is not however, necessarily the most interesting part of the story which is at least as much about labeling people, or at least selfie-takers, as narcissistic. Are they?
I admit to not taking selfies – never have – and to wondering about that myself, but I also think that if that is a person’s worst expression of narcissism, they are probably at least as healthy as the rest of us. At the end of the day, I do worry about a culture which embraces our broadcasting every moment of our lives, and even more, about the ways in which taking the pictures might actually detract – or, more accurately, negatively redefine – the selfie-takers’ experience of the moment in which they find themselves. But narcissists? Seems a bit harsh to me.
No, the really interesting, and potentially uplifting, insights from this study are all but buried in the reporting of it. It turns out that both habitual selfie-takers and non-selfie-takers , assumed that they would be more attractive to others than they were rated as being by independent raters. In other words, being in relationship to the people we see in a picture makes us more likely to rate them more attractive than we would rate the same person’s attractiveness were they a stranger. Now that is cool!
Relationship (presumably positive, but that too should be studied) shapes our ability to see beauty. That is no small thing, especially in our increasingly image-driven world. Want to feel more beautiful? Ask a person who cares about you, how you look! Or conversely, perhaps we should think about how our willingness to see more beauty where others might see less, is at least one useful marker of a good relationship.
I know, at some level, this is nothing more than a meditation on the often over-worked idea that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The difference here, I hope, is that we are reminded how we, as beholders, can invite/challenge ourselves to see more beauty if we really are in relationship with the one at whom we are looking.
Listed for many years in Newsweek as one of America’s “50 Most Influential Rabbis” and recognized as one of our nation’s leading “Preachers and Teachers,” by Beliefnet.com, Rabbi Brad Hirschfield serves as the President of Clal–The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, a training institute, think tank, and resource center nurturing religious and intellectual pluralism within the Jewish community, and the wider world, preparing people to meet the biggest challenges we face in our increasingly polarized world.
An ordained Orthodox rabbi who studied for his PhD and taught at The Jewish Theological Seminary, he has also taught the University of Pennsylvania, where he directs an ongoing seminar, and American Jewish University. Rabbi Brad regularly teaches and consults for the US Army and United States Department of Defense, religious organizations — Jewish and Christian — including United Seminary (Methodist), Yeshivat Chovevei Torah (Modern Orthodox) Luther Seminary (Lutheran), and The Jewish Theological Seminary (Conservative) — civic organizations including No Labels, Odyssey Impact, and The Aspen Institute, numerous Jewish Federations, and a variety of communal and family foundations.
Hirschfield is the author and editor of numerous books, including You Don’t Have To Be Wrong For Me To Be Right: Finding Faith Without Fanaticism, writes a column for Religion News Service, and appears regularly on TV and radio in outlets ranging from The Washington Post to Fox News Channel. He is also the founder of the Stand and See Fellowship, which brings hundreds of Christian religious leaders to Israel, preparing them to address the increasing polarization around Middle East issues — and really all currently polarizing issues at home and abroad — with six words, “It’s more complicated than we know.”