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來了又去，而我見到那晚自己的照片并不興奮。并不是因為照片里的我做了什么難看的事，我只是討厭鏡頭前的自己。

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 pall on my visage. To my surprise, science agrees that the mirror is to blame, but not for the reasons I’d thought.

別誤會我，我自認還算是長相不錯的小伙。只是有的時候照片中的我真的丑斃了。正如《宋飛正傳》里有一集，杰里的女友只在合適的燈光下看起來不錯。總體而言，我對鏡子前的自己還算滿意，但相機卻把我拍丑了。令我驚訝的是，科學上來看確實是鏡子的錯，但卻并不是我所認為的那樣。

It comes down to facial symmetry, and in this regard my face is skewed. My chin is crooked, my eyes don’t line up, and there’s?a weird 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.

這涉及到面部對稱性，在這點上，我的臉是扭曲的。我的下巴彎曲，眼睛不在一條線上，而且在我額頭左側的發髻線上有一個奇怪的彎。重大新聞：你的臉很有可能也不是完全對稱的。只有很少一部分人臉部是接近對稱的，甚至連一些模特和明星的臉也是扭曲的。

This matters because of an effect called “mere-exposure.” Formulated 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 asymmetries are left unflipped by the camera, you see an unappealing, alien version of yourself.

這點很重要，因為涉及到了一個叫做“曝光效應”的影響。在1968年，由心理學家羅伯特扎榮茨提出，主要講人們會偏好自己熟知的事物。扎榮茨利用不同的形狀、面部表情、甚至是毫無意義的文字進行測試。由于我們在鏡子前看到自己的頻率最高，所以這是我們最喜歡的自我影像。根據曝光效應的影響，當你輕微的不對稱的面部表情被鏡頭抓拍到后，你會看到一個毫無吸引力、陌生的自己。

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，鏡子欺騙了你，你可能比你想象的還要更漂亮。同樣，2008年的一項研究證明人們更愿意相信他們本身更具有吸引力。

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 gender. 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.

在這個試驗中，研究人員對受試者的照片進行調整，通過與長相好或不好的同性別人的照片融合，使受試者（的照片）變得更好看或者難看。然后，將每個受試者不同版本的照片混入陌生者的照片中，再要求他們從中找出自己的照片。人們通常都是更快的找到自己看起來更有魅力的照片---正如他們可以更快的發現更具有魅力的自己。（順便說一下，曾有一些研究表明人們對自己的看法往往比較消極，而這些發現則恰恰相反。不過這又是另外一碼事了。）所以，除了曝光效應，你照片中的自己是不會辜負你對自己的過高期望。

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 flip them around before putting them on Facebook, and I’ll try to keep my vanity in check.

我認為這是合理的：在我腦海里，盡管我喝威士忌醉的睜不開眼，爬上酒吧柜臺開始午夜倒計時，踉踉蹌蹌在到處都是陌生人的酒吧里一路與人擊掌，我都覺得自己是風流倜儻的。（不過我自己對這些細節只有模糊的印象）。所以朋友們，如果你有任何這種場景的照片，請在發到臉書上之前仔細的看看，我會盡量克制住自己的虛榮心。

Vocabulary

stoked: 振奮的

fugly: 丑極了

casts a pall over sth: 煞風景

visage: 容貌

symmetry: 對稱

skewed: 歪斜的

crooked: 彎曲的

hairline: 發際線

asymmetries: 不對稱

meld: 融合

dashing: 勁頭十足的、瀟灑的

pie-eyed: 喝醉了的

high-fiving: 與人擊掌

（來源：滬江英語 編輯：Zoe 祝興媛）