

Specifically, when I leave for work in the morning, I am generally confident in my appearance after having looked at myself in the bathroom mirror. Yet when I see photos of myself, I often want to curl up in a ball and weep at my hideousness.



Outside of obvious psychological factors (the tendency to overanalyze or be overly critical of photos of ourselves) what could be causing this great divide between what I see in the mirror and what I see in a photograph? How does each form of reflection distort reality? Or not?

In terms of providing an accurate representation of how things actually appear in real life, is there any scientific data to suggest whether a mirror or a photograph provides the more realistic image?