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The Self in the Mind's Eye: Revealing How We Truly See Ourselves Through Reverse Correlation
Lara Maister1, Sophie De Beukelaer2, Matthew R Longo3
1School of Psychology, Bangor University.
Psychological Science
|November 11, 2021
Summary
Researchers visualized mental self-portraits to reveal personality and self-esteem. These mental images, or self-portraits, offer insights into how psychological beliefs shape our self-perception.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Neuroscience
- Visual Perception
Background:
- Understanding the internal mental representation of self-perception is crucial for psychology.
- Previous research has explored self-perception but lacked objective methods to visualize mental self-images.
Purpose of the Study:
- To develop and utilize a computational method to visually reconstruct individuals' mental self-portraits of their faces and bodies.
- To investigate the relationship between these mental self-portraits, actual appearance, personality traits, and self-esteem.
Main Methods:
- Employed a computational reverse-correlation technique with 116 adult participants.
- Participants generated mental self-portraits of their faces and body shapes.
- Correlated self-portraits with actual physical appearance, self-reported personality, and social self-esteem.
Main Results:
- Mental self-portraits of faces were similar to actual faces and contained detectable personality cues.
- Higher social self-esteem correlated with more accurate (true-to-life) facial self-portraits.
- Body self-portraits showed less correlation with actual body shape but were influenced by beliefs and emotions.
Conclusions:
- Psychological beliefs and attitudes significantly bias perceptual self-representation.
- Mental self-portraits provide a novel window into internal self-representation, impacting mental health and visual culture.
- The study highlights the subjective nature of self-perception and its connection to psychological states.
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