By now I have found about 10 different reasons why people don’t like being in front of the camera, and all those reasons correlate between each other to a certain extent. Last week we have discussed that photos are not the exact reflection of reality, camera distortion, flipped image and mere-exposure effect. Today let’s dig a bit dipper!
Our perception is selective. Because our ability to attend to the things around us is limited in terms of both capacity and duration, we have to be picky about the things we pay attention, highlighting the details that we need to focus on and getting rid of irrelevant information. There are different factors that may influence selective perception. Basically, our previous experience heavily effects it. Our selective perception can depend on our beliefs, attitudes, expectations and emotional states also influence what we “choose” to perceive.
One of the reasons this occurred is because we are simply bombarded with too many stimuli every day to pay equal attention to everything. We pick and choose according to our needs. The unconscious processing abilities of the human brain are estimated at roughly 11 million pieces of information per second. Compare that to the estimate for conscious processing: about 40 pieces per second. So, you only actually see 40 bits of information and disregard another almost 11 million…
There are two types of selective perception: perceptual vigilance and perceptual defense. I’m talking today about perceptual vigilance which is a process when we notice the stimuli significant to us at some degree.
In simple words we are noticing what important to us.
When we look at the photo of ourselves, we pay attention to the things that worry us. We look at ourselves, and our inner critic is tearing the photo apart, screaming, about every little thing that we don’t like about ourselves! And, unfortunately, everyone generally has something that they don’t like about themselves. How many people don’t smile because of their teeth? Or think that their nose is too long?
You are analysing photos of yourself differently from how you are analysing photos of others. How many time you show your photo to the friends, and they said: You look great on this photo! And you think they are joking… We have so much information about ourselves, that’s why our friends will perceive photos differently. And if you show this picture to the person who doesn’t know you, they will perceive it differently again…
So stop thinking that everyone is noticing something that you don’t like about yourself because in the majority cases they don’t!