For anyone that knows me… Has seen photos of me… Or even had photos taken with me… They’ll know how big my head is… Not metaphorically, but in actual size… I have a big, round head. Fact.
WHen I let my hair grow too long, it is like I have a beach ball sat atop my neck!
Or is it? I have often defended myself against jokes made by friends by saying that I obviously have a HUGE brain which accounts for me being so witty, successful and clever… Then I cry to myself when they are not around… Kidding.
Maybe though, just maybe… It is all just my own inflated perception?
According to this piece of research… It is very likely that I am not as big-headed as I think. Yay!
Again, I’ll reiterate, I am not suggesting I am modest, we all know that would be untrue! I mean, literally, that the physical size of my head is genuinely smaller than I think it is… The same is very likely to be true of you…
According to the research, the team of psychologists conducting it have shown that students overestimated the size of their own heads — heck, is that just students though? Hahaha… However, the research also showed that they did not overestimate the size of other people’s.
Apparently, we overestimate the size of our own heads by between 30 and 42 per cent on average. Blimey, that is verging on half as big — Hahaha, I really would be a ‘prize-winning watermelon head‘ in my own perception.
As a useful comparison task, students estimated the size of their own and other people’s hands. If anything, this led to underestimation.
The overestimation of head size was almost entirely removed when students made their estimates with the help of a mirror, and also if they wore a headband from the top of the head to the chin (thus providing proprioceptive feedback).
This is lovely… In a final study, the researchers compared the size of heads in portraits and self-portraits dating from the fifteenth to twentieth century. Head size was bigger in the self-portraits! Brilliant… I’d love to know who commisions this fabulous type of reearch… You can tell that not much was going on in hypnosis land for me to write about today, can’t you?
The researchers don’t really know why we overestimate our head size… The fact we can’t see it directly is suggested as having something to do with it. However, another possibility, according to the researchers, is that thinking our heads are bigger than they really are is actually just another self-serving delusion — similar to the way most of us think we’re cleverer and more attractive than is really the case… Except in my case, of course… Whereby the delusion is based purely upon reality…
There you have it.
Any of you that missed last nights teleseminar/webcast — you can listen for free in my members area… All the teleseminar recordings are in there and will continue to be added… Have a great day, I am off to see if I can fit my head through the new gates on our driveway that we are having fitted today…
