New Year’s Eve has come and gone, and I’m not at all stoked to see the pictures of myself from that night. It’s not because I was captured doing something compromising, I just hate seeing myself on camera.

12.31来了又去，而我见到那晚自己的照片并不兴奋。并不是因为照片里的我做了什么难看的事，我只是讨厌镜头前的自己。

Don’t get me wrong, I think I’m a decent looking dude. It’s just that sometimes when I’m a little fugly on film. It’s like that episode of Seinfeld where Jerry’s girlfriend only looks good in the right light. I’m generally OK with the reflection I see in the mirror, but the camera casts a pall¹ on my visage. To my surprise, science agrees that the mirror is to blame, but not for the reasons I’d thought.

别误会我，我自认还算是长相不错的小伙。只是有的时候照片中的我真的丑毙了。正如《宋飞正传》里有一集，杰里的女友只在合适的灯光下看起来不错。总体而言，我对镜子前的自己还算满意，但相机却把我拍丑了。令我惊讶的是，科学上来看确实是镜子的错，但却并不是我所认为的那样。

It comes down to facial symmetry, and in this regard my face is skewed. My chin is crooked², my eyes don’t line up, and there’s a weird³ bay in my hairline on my left forehead. News flash: your face probably isn’t absolutely symmetrical either. Only a few people come close, and even some models and actors have crooked faces.

这涉及到面部对称性，在这点上，我的脸是扭曲的。我的下巴弯曲，眼睛不在一条线上，而且在我额头左侧的发髻线上有一个奇怪的弯。重大新闻：你的脸很有可能也不是完全对称的。只有很少一部分人脸部是接近对称的，甚至连一些模特和明星的脸也是扭曲的。

This matters because of an effect called “mere-exposure.” Formulated⁴ in 1968 by a psychologist named Robert Zajonc, it basically says that people react more favorably to things they seen more often. Zajonc tested this with everything from shapes, to facial expressions, even nonsense words. Since we see ourselves most frequently in the mirror, this is our preferred self-image. According to the mere-exposure effect, when your slight facial asymmetries⁵ are left unflipped by the camera, you see an unappealing, alien version of yourself.

这点很重要，因为涉及到了一个叫做“曝光效应”的影响。在1968年，由心理学家罗伯特扎荣茨提出，主要讲人们会偏好自己熟知的事物。扎荣茨利用不同的形状、面部表情、甚至是毫无意义的文字进行测试。由于我们在镜子前看到自己的频率最高，所以这是我们最喜欢的自我影像。根据曝光效应的影响，当你轻微的不对称的面部表情被镜头抓拍到后，你会看到一个毫无吸引力、犹如外星人一般的自己。

So the mirror lies, and you might be more beautiful than you think. Then again, a 2008 study showed that people tend to think they’re more attractive than they actually are.

所以，镜子骗了你，你可能比你想象的还要更漂亮。同样，2008年的一项研究证明人们更愿意相信他们本身更具有吸引力。

In this experiment, researchers altered pictures of participants to make them look more and less attractive by melding them with a photo of an attractive—or unattractive—person of the same gender⁷. Then, they mixed these versions of each person in with photos of strangers and asked the subjects to pick themselves out of the line up. People were quicker to pick the photo of themselves when it was more attractive—as if they were quicker to recognize a more attractive version of themselves. (These findings, by the way, run contrary to research that suggests most people have a negative view of their own body. But that’s a story for another day.) So, in addition to mere-exposure, those pictures of your own face just aren’t living up to your own outsized expectations.

在下面这个试验中，研究人员对受试者的照片进行调整，通过与长相好或不好的同性别人的照片融合，使受试者（的照片）变得更好看或者难看。然后，将每个受试者不同版本的照片混入陌生者的照片中，再要求他们从中找出自己的照片。人们通常都是更快的找到自己看起来更有魅力的照片---正如他们可以更快的发现更具有魅力的自己。（顺便说一下，曾有一些研究表明人们对自己的看法往往比较消极，而这些发现则恰恰相反。不过这又是另外一码事了。）所以，除了曝光效应，你照片中的自己是不会辜负你对自己的过高期望。

This makes sense to me: In my mind’s eye, I looked pretty dashing in the stories my friends told me, even though I was getting pie-eyed on whiskey, climbing on the bar top for the midnight countdown, high-fiving my way through a bar full of strangers (my own recollection of these details is kinda foggy). So friends, if you own pictures of any of these events, I ask that you flip⁶ them around before putting them on Facebook, and I’ll try to keep my vanity in check.

我认为这是合理的：在我脑海里，尽管我喝威士忌醉的睁不开眼，爬上酒吧柜台开始午夜倒计时，踉踉跄跄在到处都是陌生人的酒吧里一路与人击掌，我都觉得自己是风流倜傥的。（不过我自己对这些细节只有模糊的印象）。所以朋友们，如果你有任何这种场景的照片，请在发到脸书上之前仔细的看看，我会尽量克制住自己的虚荣心。