I have a little theory about why folks often screw up their faces in disgust when they see a picture of themselves. The funny thing is that often their friends will love the picture, but the subject just hates it. "But I don't look like that!" they protest.

All of us have facial asymmetries of one kind of another. I have various spots and moles and so on, but I know that my left eyelid is lower than the right, especially when I'm tired, so it look a little droopy. According to Just-So-Story-telling evolutionary psychologists, asymmetry is ugly because it is an indirect marker of low fitness. (Evolutionary fitness, not jump-around-in-aerobics-fitness.) Personally I've always liked kinda wonky faces and I find them appealing and interesting... but I've never claimed to be anything but an evolutionary dead end.

Anyway. Asymmetry. So when we look at ourselves in the mirror, we become accustomed to our uneven features and they are no longer prominent or oft-noticed. However a photograph shows our faces as they appear to others, not a reversed mirror image, so we see our asymmetries not only swapped to the other side, but effectively exaggerated due to the cognitive adjustments we've already made that permit us to ignore them in the first place. This image we see resembles us closely but is just different enough to our mental image of ourselves, facilitated by the confounding mirror, to freak us out. Whereas this image is exactly what our friends see and to them it's a good reproduction of a face they know and like.

I reckon psychologists could, if they haven't already, play around with photoshop and adjust portraits a few different ways. When asked, the portrait subject would claim that their mirror reflection is their true selves and protest that something's wrong with the untouched portrait.

Amateur psychology over and out.