Don't ask the mirror who is fairest of them all

Published on Wednesday 18 March 2009 23:24

USING a mirror to look your best is a complete waste of time, according to scientists at St Andrews University.

Research published yesterday suggests the brain processes visual information in a way that persuades us our reflected image is the most attractive.

But to everyone else the perception is quite different.

Professor Dave Perrett, the head of the university's perception laboratory, explained that face processing takes place on the right side of the brain.

When making decisions about how attractive a person is, we focus only on the left side of their face.

So when we groom ourselves in the mirror we focus on the left side we see in front of us – the wrong side to impress others, as it attracts the least attention.

Prof Perrett said: "For more than 90 per cent of people, face processing is conducted by the right side of the brain. We have this bias to really only pay attention to one half of the face when we are making decisions about all sorts of things.

"This includes how attractive somebody is, how old they are, or how masculine or feminine they are. We look predominantly to the left-hand side.

"That means that when we look in the mirror we get things backwards."