When I started meeting people at the beginning of this college year, nervous thoughts were constantly racing through my head: How did other people view me? Did they understand my humor, my values? As a professional over thinker, I am constantly wondering how people look at me. What do they like and why do they like it? What do they find annoying? Along with that am (often) eager to learn how people view other people. Once again overthinking the situation, I do not think this curiosity is derived from only insecurities, but also from curiosity about what goes through people’s minds. I find perspective one of the most confusing yet intriguing things in the world.
I asked the question: Do you think people see you the way you see yourself? These are some of the responses I received:
- no I think we see ourselves differently cuz we see more imperfections with ourselves. we judge ourselves harsher
- no- I think people think I am a lot uglier than I think I am. But who knows.
- I hope people hopefully see me as a variation as the way I see myself. That being said its understandable that people will likely have varying opinions
- no- I see myself as an emotional worrywart trainwreck and pull off confident and give no f**** attitude to some people
- I think people see me somewhat different from the way I see myself I think people see me as a lot more confident then I really know everyone sees me the way I am in the sense of my happiness and my attitude
- yes-Well I think the way I present myself to other people is pretty representative of who I am as a person like I’ll never act a different way depending on who I’m around
- Obviously not- everyone puts on a persona no matter who you are, everyone is scared of rejection and not being accepted so everyone wants to be there best self
- I think that as much as one thinks he or she can, you can never really see your true flaws or excelling qualities. And everything you think about yourself you expect to be amplified in other people’s perceptions
- I don’t think so. I think people see me better than I see myself
I asked this question to 103 people. 23% of the overall study said yes, leaving 77% saying no. The ratio of females to males, however was uneven, so I re-examined the results based on gender. 13/62 females believe people see them the way they see themselves, and 11/41 males believe people see them the way they see themselves. That is only 21% of females, and 27% of males. I separated the results by gender because I hypothesized that more males would respond “yes”. Though they were slightly greater, the response was not as high as I predicted. To me this shows that men and women’s perspectives are not as different as most think.
To be completely honest, I am not sure what 77% of people saying they do not think most people see them and they see themselves shows. Does this just stem from insecurities? Does this show that people are too timid to show others their vulnerability. Or for people that know they are the hardest on themselves, do they know their perspectives are distorted?
After looking at these results further, I wondered: Ok, so for the people that said no, which perspective should they believe in more, their own or the people around them? If we are harder on ourselves should we listen to the people telling us we are better? Or if we think the people around us think less of us, should we try to see understand what they are saying? What perspective is the most “true”; or does this define what a perspective is not?
I think it’s really cool that you conducted a survey yourself. I am really surprised by how few men answered “yes”. Maybe age has an effect? I would be interested in seeing a larger study of near 5,000 people of all age ranges (maybe something like 8-13, 14-17, 18-25, 26-40, 41-60, 61+) and decide if the reason so few men said “yes” is because of their age that is so controlled by peer judgements. I think women definitely have more reasons to think worse of how other people see them, since we are constantly exposed to unattainable beauty standards and photoshop in magazines, ads, and movies. I wonder what makes the men you surveyed so insecure?
I enjoyed that you did your own research. I am sure many people were eager to respond because it is such a common question people ask themselves. I often wonder if people see me the way I see myself, but I am at the opposite end of the spectrum. I try to hold a very good opinion of myself so that eliminates the insecurities theory. I also found it interesting that the percentages between male and female were similar. Usually it is believed that women have more distorted views of themselves than men. It would be interesting to factor in whether they held positive or negative views of themselves.
The fact that you took the initiative to obtain your own information and statistics is great. You also examined gender differences in which could have an effect on your results. However, I really think you should do more meta-analyses and research the mechanism behind these thoughts. There must be some explanation for why people do or do not think people view them the way they view themselves. If not, there are at least some explanations about how people obtain their perceptions of others. I found an article in which Mark Leary, a professor of psychology at Wake Forest University states, “”You filter the cues that you get from others through your self-concept.” Our self-concept has a big impact on what others think about us (dealing with meta-perceptions). Those who claimed they think people view them the way they view themselves may be on the right track according to Leary’s claims. He believes that we look to others for the perceptions of ourselves to others when in fact we probably already know what most people think of us (as it is what we think about ourselves). The research I present from Psychology Today is a helping hand in understanding perceptions and how they occur.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200505/metaperceptions-how-do-you-see-yourself
I found this post very interesting. I, for a while, saw myself as an in shape young man, it took one bold friend to finally tell me I could stand to lose a few pounds. I finally did and now feel better than ever. My question would be why are people so afraid to be honest to one another? I think that’s why people think they are seen different by others, because even if they are reassured they are not, they assume the other person is lying. Lying is a huge problem in our society, and I think this leads to this problem. I would be very interested to see any big studies done by professionals in this area. This Article discusses how others may see you compared to yourself.