# The Trouble With Comparing Yourself to Who You Used to Be 2026-10-22 · Somerset County, New Jersey · Reported Feature A new Ohio State study finds that comparing today’s reflection with an earlier version of ourselves can be tied to shame—or to greater appreciation for how far we’ve come. A new Ohio State study finds that comparing today’s reflection with an earlier version of ourselves can be tied to shame—or to greater appreciation for how far we’ve come. --- It can happen with a single photograph. A younger face appears in an old album or a phone memory, and the person looking back begins taking inventory: the hair, the shape of a body, the years that have passed. The comparison is not with a celebrity, a friend or a stranger. It is with someone who once occupied the same life. We spend plenty of time worrying about how people measure themselves against others. New research from The Ohio State University suggests another comparison deserves attention: how we judge our present appearance against the way we used to look. In a study published in the journal Body Image, psychology researchers Tracy Tylka and Nichole Wood-Barcalow developed an 11-item tool called the Self-Oriented Comparison Scale for Appearance. They tested it in two community samples of U.S. adults, examining the different ways people assess their current bodies against their former selves. The direction of that comparison mattered. People who believed they had looked better in the past reported more body shame, repetitive negative thinking and disordered-eating symptoms. Those who viewed their earlier appearance less favorably tended to report greater body appreciation and pride, along with less shame. That is an important distinction. Looking backward is not automatically damaging. The same old photograph might leave one person mourning an appearance they feel they have lost and another appreciating a change they have made. What matters is not simply that the comparison occurs, but the judgment attached to it. The researchers also found differences between men and women in their samples. Women reported more of the comparisons that favored a past appearance, while men reported more of the comparisons that favored their present appearance. Those findings describe patterns in the study groups, not universal experiences. And the research adds a distinctly modern wrinkle. We carry extensive personal archives in our pockets. Phones collect years of portraits, social platforms resurface old photographs, and a version of ourselves from a decade ago can appear without our asking for it. These technologies make the comparison easier to encounter, although the study did not test whether photo apps or social-media reminders cause body-image problems. Tylka and Wood-Barcalow’s work is primarily about identifying and measuring a psychological pattern. Its associations do not establish that comparing ourselves with old photographs causes eating difficulties or poor body image. But the new scale gives researchers and clinicians a way to examine an experience that earlier body-image measures largely overlooked. The cultural question extends beyond appearance. We are often encouraged to celebrate personal growth while simultaneously preserving evidence of a younger version of ourselves as an ideal. A photo that should document a life lived can become a benchmark that the present is expected to beat. Perhaps the more useful question is not whether we still look like the person in the photograph. It is why we assume that person should be our competition. Reporting notes & sources The Ohio State University, “The risk of looking back at former versions of ourselves,” Oct. 2, 2026: https://news.osu.edu/the-risk-of-looking-back-at-former-versions-of-ourselves/ Tracy L. Tylka and Nichole L. Wood-Barcalow, “Self-Oriented Comparison Scale for Appearance (SOCS-A): Development and psychometric evaluation,” Body Image, 58 (2026), 102159. DOI: 10.1016/j.bodyim.2026.102159 Ohio State College of Arts and Sciences follow-up, Oct. 6, 2026: https://artsandsciences.osu.edu/news/risk-looking-back-former-versions-ourselves --- ProbleMattic is written and maintained by Matthew Kulcsar, a software engineer, project manager, technologist, platform builder, emergency-services-trained helper, grandfather, and lifelong collector of broken systems, odd behaviors, and useful nonsense.