Why So Many People Hate Watching Themselves On Video

Why do you and so many others hate seeing themselves on video? There's a very simple answer to that.

Start with Confirmation Bias

If you think that you're awkward on camera, you'll be looking for evidence of that when you review the footage. You will want to confirm your belief.

The real culprit is the ...

Familiarity Principle

We prefer things we are familiar with. The reverse of this is we don't warm quickly to things we are unfamiliar with. Strangely, you are not as familiar with yourself as you think.

You know when you look in the mirror, and you see yourself? That's not you. That's a mirror image of you and you are the only person in the world who sees this. Everyone else who looks at you sees a different face than the one you see.

Hang on a minute, that shouldn't matter, our faces are symmetrical ... or are they? A very very few people have perfectly symmetrical faces. Like me, most of the world has two distinctly different sides. We are so used to this we don't notice it.

But flip our faces - which is what happens when you see a video of yourself - you're seeing a reverse image of what you are accustomed to and it is literally shocking. You say that's not what I look like, but is to the rest of the world, just not you.

So don't use that argument to avoid using video. There's nothing wrong with you. Hope that helps.