Kid you not, this was an article in the recent Aesthetic Surgery Journal January 2021.
“Evaluation of Selfies and Filtered Selfies and Effects on First Impressions.”
They talked about wanting to do this study because of the focus on selfies and how people look, and the talk of “Snapchat dysmorphia” and how patients seek procedures to look like their selfie or filtered selfie. They state this particularly for those ages 22- 37 yo.
So they decided to study the effects on first impression using different photograph types.
- 4 types of photos: SELFIE, FILTERED SELFIE, REAR FACING SMARTPHONE CAMERA, and DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPH taken with a digital camera (not a phone).
- They had 240 evaluators and 4 patients each complete the 4 different photograph types.
- They evaluations then completed a survey rating first impressions on various measures of success for each photograph type.
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- Social skills
- Academic performance
- Dating Success
- Occupational Success
- Attractiveness
- Financial Success
- Relationship Success
- Athletic Success
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- This yielded 960 first impressions, recorded on 8 subscales, giving 7680 individual assessments.
Findings?
The digital photograph won.
Selfies and filtered selfies were equal, with the dreaded rear facing smartphone camera coming in last.
They conclude that we surgeons need to discuss Snapchat dysmorphia with patients. They think the study shows that selfies and filtered selfies always have lower first impression ratings, so doing surgery to make your selfie better will fail.
They had some cool facts in the article:
- Why filters? It allows you to smooth the skin, widen the eyes, narrow the jawline, plump the lips, and get rid of wrinkles
- Filtered selfies inherently make a more feminine image, so get more negative impressions for men.
- Selfies increase nasal width by 30%. So when you look at a selfie and think “MY NOSE IS TOO WIDE” it may not be IRL. (in real life). They said they have seen an increase in people coming in wanting nose jobs, but when they take a photo with a digital camera and show them their actual photo vs a selfie, they realize their nose isn’t as bad as they thought it was.
- Milennials are expected to take 25,000 selfies in a lifetime. 93 million selfies are put onto Instagram daily.
- Selfie research has shown selfies can make one seem less trustworthy, less socially attractive, less open to new experiences, and seem more narcissistic.
Criticism of the study said that the digital camera photo was taken with umbrella lighting, not room lighting, which tends to give a better result due to uniform lighting. They also said the camera photos tend to look more “professional” so they may have increased the bias in scoring that those photos were more “successful.”
My thoughts?
Interesting. The photos show the selfies next to the regular camera photos, and the nose being wide thing with a selfie is a real thing. I do think there is a trend to distortion in our world. Filters, air brushing, and photoshop let people do things which aren’t seen in real life. People are overfilling their lips even when they are young. I just am not sure what we are striving for when natural and uniqueness is no longer a standard.