The Self in the Mind’s Eye: Revealing How We Truly See Ourselves Through Reverse Correlation

Is there a way to visually depict the image people “see” of themselves in their minds’ eyes? And if so, what can these mental images tell us about ourselves? We used a computational reverse-correlation technique to explore individuals’ mental “self-portraits” of their faces and body shapes in an unbiased, data-driven way (total N = 116 adults). Self-portraits were similar to individuals’ real faces but, importantly, also contained clues to each...