Name: The Facial Scar Experiment: others see us how we see ourselves
Uploaded: 2025-11-29T16:53:51.000Z
Duration: 4 min 30 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Hey Anna, do you mind if I borrow your lavender blazer for my job interview?

Of course, Anna, but have you ever heard of the facial scar experiment?

So the study was actually called the Perceptions of the Impact of Negatively Valued Physical Characteristics on Social Interaction by Kleck and Strenta.

Basically, they took all these participants, they told them a makeup artist was gonna paint this scar on their face and then they would have to go out and interact with strangers in like the real world.

The participants believed the whole point of this story was to see if people with facial disfigurements faced discrimination.

So you want me to put a scar on my face for my inner.

So the participants were actually shown the scar in the mirror, but

right before they left the room, the makeup artist was like, hold on a second, honey, let me do like a little touchy, touchy up.

But instead she completely removed the scar.

Upon returning, the participants reported massively increased levels of discrimination.

They were like, oh my God, these real world randos were like staring at my scar.

They were even saying some like pass ag shit.

And meanwhile Kleck and Strenta were like, oh my God, they have no idea that their faces were fucking normal.

They literally were interpreting all of these innocuous comments as shade.

I don't think that was the actual clinical transcription, but

this was a very powerful study that really reveals the biases we have about ourselves and how they influence our social interactions, you know, our self image and is central to the lens with which we view the world.

Do others see us how we see ourselves or do we just believe that they do?

It definitely provoked a singular thought for me.

Okay, so does this mean you don't want me to borrow your blazer?

Oh no, babe, absolutely borrow the blaze.

I'm just saying go into the world with the positive expectation that you are the best bitch for the job.

I actually just finished this book called the Expectation Effect by David Robson, which cites all these medical studies and offers all of this compelling evidence that we are the product of our expectations.

Like, we all know about the placebo effect, right?

But the placebo effect even works on people who know that they're taking a placebo.

And we have all this growing evidence that the placebo effect is actually becoming more and more powerful because as more people learn about it, they're expecting the placebo effect to happen and thus experiencing it.

So you're telling me the placebo effect has A placebo effect.

And what we expect plays a vital role in shaping what we experience.

And though that doesn't, like, guarantee we're gonna become what we think, if we have a positive expectation, our brain is gonna do the best it can to steer us in that direction.

All right, babe, well, you go out there and you go get that job.

Thank you to the patrons who supported today's video and thank you to Better Help for sponsoring today's episode.

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