An article in Scientific America has pointed out that empirical research says that, actually, you think you’re more beautiful than you are. We have a deep-seated need to feel good about ourselves and we naturally employ a number of self-enhancing strategies to achieve this. Social psychologists have amassed oceans of research into what they call the “above average effect”, or “illusory superiority”, and shown that, for example, 70% of us rate ourselves as above average in leadership, 93% in driving and 85% at getting on well with others—all obviously statistical impossibilities.

    We rose-tint our memories and put ourselves into self-affirming situations. We become defensive when criticized, and apply negative stereotypes to others to boost our own esteem. We stalk around thinking we’re hot stuff.

    Psychologist and behavioral scientist Nicholas Epley oversaw a key studying into self-enhancement and attractiveness. Rather than have people simply rate their beauty compared with others, he asked them to identify an original photograph of themselves from a lineup including versions that had been altered to appear more and less attractive. Visual recognition, reads the study, is “an automatic psychological process, occurring rapidly and intuitively with little or no apparent conscious deliberation”. If the subjects quickly chose a falsely flattering image—which most did—they genuinely believed it was really how they looked.

    Epley found no significant gender difference in responses. Nor was there any evidence that, those who self-enhance the most (that is, the participants who thought the most positively doctored pictures were real) were doing so to make up for profound insecurities. In fact, those who thought that the images higher up the attractiveness scale were real directly corresponded with those who showed other markers for having higher self-esteem. “I don’t think the findings that we have are any evidence of personal delusion,” says Epley. “It’s a reflection simply of people generally thinking well of themselves.” If you are depressed, you won’t be self-enhancing.

    Knowing the results of Epley’s study, it makes sense that why people hate photographs of themselves so viscerally—on one level, they don’t even recognize the person in the picture as themselves. Facebook, therefore, is a self-enhancer’s paradise, where people can share only the most flattering photos, the cream of their wit, style, beauty, intellect and lifestyle. It’s not that people’s profiles are dishonest, says Catalina Toma of Wisconsin-Madison University, “but they portray an idealized version of themselves.”

答案精析：根据题目关键词Facebook is self-enhancer’s paradise可定位到第五段第二句。定位句指出了Facebook适合自我抬高者的原因是人们讨厌看到自己真实的样子，而Facebook能让人只晒出自己美化修饰过的照片，也就是说人们可以“不公开自己不吸引人的一面”，因此选择D项。

错项排除：第五段第三句指出，该现象并不等同于dishonest profiles（欺骗性个人资料），与A选项矛盾，所以排除A项。B选项把share偷换成define，使选项不符合原文，而且原文未提及traditional lifestyles（传统生活方式），所以B错误。C选项对应the cream of their wit，但没有提及对知识的追求，也可排除。