One of the key concepts my psychology professor, Dr. Marc D. Lee, taught in pretty much the first lecture of the semester was the idea that psychology plays a part in every aspect, part, and time in our lives. And one field where cognitive thought processes are most prevalent is in how we view ourselves.
Psychology shapes how we perceive our own beauty standards through several concepts such as cognitive biases and one’s upbringing, social comparison(especially on social media), and the internalizing of external ideals.
Cognitive biases shape beauty standards and our perception of appearance by distorting how we evaluate ourselves, interpret social cues, and assign value to physical traits. We tend to give positive personality traits to people who are conventionally more attractive, making people who aren’t picture perfect tend to hammer down on their personality flaws more as it connects to their physical attributes.
As well as constant comparison to others, which mentally reinforces ideas that are often unrealistic for themselves, further allowing negative beauty standards that aren’t healthy to become the standard for life.
One’s own upbringing heavily shapes our beauty standards and body image through early modeling and conditioning long before external media have an effect. As we grow up, we often mimic the habits and ideas of our own caretakers. This applies to beauty and self-love as well; if a parent has obsessions with beauty and looks, children will internalize these ideas and apply them to themselves.
Another part of one’s upbringing that can come from parents as well is culture, values, and remarks from family members. If comments from families are told at a young age, they often stay with us throughout our lives, especially on physical traits. This, mixed with ancient, out-of-touch ideas passed down by generations that focus on health and fitness, can damage a child’s cognitive view of themselves from a young age.
Although there aren’t many ways to change our upbringing, there are ways we can shift our mindsets as we grow older. One way is to limit social media consumption. Studies show that cutting social media usage down improves appearance perception and reduces internal pressure. Another simple way is natural maturing as well, which is much harder, but as we mature and develop, especially cognitively, we tend to focus less on the opinion of others after the youth and young teen years. Lastly, not engaging in beauty and body internet trends, which goes hand in hand with lessening social media intake, but protecting yourself from cringe things like looks-maxxing and other harmful trends can go a long way.
