Know Thyself

The science of self-knowledge
Simine Vazire is an assistant professor of psychology at Washington University in St. Louis and the director of the Personality and Self-Knowledge lab. See full bio

Comments on "So your mom thinks you're beautiful..."

So your mom thinks you're beautiful...

During today's online chat with Dear Prudence, a woman asked why she can't find a boyfriend even though "people always tell me I'm really pretty, smart, fun, nice, and adventurous". Read More

Great Post!

Great Post! You are such an awesome writer. Very insightful and wise. (but should you believe me?)

For people wanting to get honest feedback on how their personalities are viewed on the basis of their facebook profiles, check out the youjustgetme application: http://apps.facebook.com/youjustgetme/

Very True!!

While reading this post i couldn't help myself to smile and to laugh about it. This is very true which is very common to a group of friends and families. I guess i could say that i am lucky that i have family and friends who are not afraid to give me negative feedbacks because they are fully aware that i won't take it the wrong way and i know that they are saying it because they care about me. Im so glad and i appreciate them for being true to me because i need to hear those things and i need someone to tell me. Of course, we are aware of ourselves but we have certain attitudes or expressions that are unpleasant/offensive to other people that we don't know or notice unless somebody tell us. The most common scenario of this is when a person is very frank to the point that he/she doesn't care whether it is offensive to other people or probably he/she is just not aware that it is offensive. It is also depends on how the person say it. Sometimes, people yell just to get their point across and for them thats how they normally express or explain themselves but for other people who don't know them, They will think that this person is angry. (which i found very funny) but for these people it is very hard and frustrating because they are often misunderstood. The other person on the other hand, who is receiving negative feedback from a yelling frank person, she/he will feel as if she/he is being attack hence, their depend mechanism will be activated either fight back to depend what they think or probably just withdraw to the conversation.

Candy coating the bad quality of a person is like tolerating toddler's bad behavior. If noboby will tell them what's wrong, they'll keep doing the same thing over and over again because they think its Okay. It is nice to highlighted the good qualities of a person in order to encourage them and to make them feel confident but they need to know and to fix what is wrong and do something to overcome it in order to obtain self growth.

Thinking You're the Best

I've known people who seem to think "my mom thinks I'm perfect, therefore I must be perfect". I've also known people who constantly criticise themselves, presumably because they grow up with criticism from family members.

A problem arises when members of these two different groups have to interact. When Mr. Perfect comes into contact with someone who admits their own imperfections, it just makes Mr. Perfect feel even better about himself (only a really awful person would have any flaws at all - I must be so much better than him), and Mr. Imperfect feel even more inferior (Mr. Perfect would admit his flaws if he had any, he must really be perfect, so much better than me.)

So your mom thinks you're beautiful...

i struggle with this i mean in the end it dosent really matter if i am or not but still its annyoing not to just know already! im fairly posative im beautiful yes my family and friends have called me beautiful but then so have complete strangers on the street or in shops or what have you and when i look in the mirror i think what i see is beautiful (i have long shiny dark brown hair that im very proud of i have olive skin and dark pink full lips a sort of button nose i have hella massive wide dark brown eyes and dark high arched eyebrows i also have a dimpled chin which i have been complimented on but still i would rather not have and im petit and bustie with a pretty good figer) but still how do i know if im beautiful really and if i am beautiful how beautiful am i i wonder? how do i know i dont i dont know in the end i dont know if im beautiful or not and in the end does it even matter? not really

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