What is the science behind the selfie?

In this Saturday, Dec. 1, 2012, file photo Actress Meryl Streep uses her IPhone to take a photo of her and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton following the State Department Dinner for the Kennedy Center Honors gala at the State Department in Washington. (AP / Kevin Wolf)

Selfies as we know them made their debut about a decade ago on social media sites such as MySpace and Flickr, with teenagers posing awkwardly in front the mirror. But the picture-taking trend has since flourished into a veritable form of self-expression, littering social media sites.

So why the rise in popularity?

It’s all about control, or what psychologists would term “reputation management,” said neuroscientist James Kilner who teaches at University College London. This level of control is made possible through cellphone cameras and social media platforms such as Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.

“You suddenly have control in a way that you don’t have control in non-virtual interactions,” Kilner told CTVNews.ca. “Digital photography allows you to keep taking pictures until you manage to take one you’re happy with.”

The word “selfie,” defined as “a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website,” was chosen by the Oxford English Dictionary as the word of the year in 2013. But it’s not just stars and teens that do it. Meryl Streep and Hillary Clinton snapped the now famous iPhone selfie of the two at a State Department dinner last month. Farmers are even jumping on the bandwagon, turning “selfies” into “felfies” by posing with their livestock and farm equipment.

And while people may think they’re putting up accurate representations of themselves online, they’re often “slightly misleading” Kilner said. “We all generally think of ourselves as being younger looking and better looking than we actually are.”

The reason for that, Kilner says, is because individuals have a very poor understanding of their own faces. This was proven through a number of experiments where individuals were asked to match facial expressions on a photograph. In most cases, people were unable to accurately produce the same facial expression without seeing themselves.

“People think they’re putting up a photograph of themselves that is a very good representation of themselves, but it’s actually a slightly misleading representation,” Kilner said.

Taking “selfies” and manipulating one’s image isn’t exactly a new phenomenon. The Italian Countess of Castiglione, born in 1837, was exploring significant moments in her life by directing her own portrait photographs. Half a century later, the Russian Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna, was one of the first teenagers to take a selfie in front of a mirror at the age of 13. Meanwhile, Rembrandt was manipulating his image in self-portraits, where he painted himself to resemble a famous Italian poet.

“So the idea that you can manipulate peoples’ perspective of you by how you portray yourself is nothing new,” Kilner said. “What is new is the medium and the accessibility of being able to share it.”