This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.

They're on our TVs, on our phones and on highway billboards.

Flawless, airbrushed images of beautiful people, living beautiful lives.

Their complexions glow, their wealth seems effortless, and their children are always smiling.

All of us are surrounded by these pictures of perfection, pictures that contrast all too starkly

with our own complicated, messy lives. Social media platforms exacerbate this. Friends post pictures of their idyllic vacations.

Colleagues announce promotions.

A lot of people use the hashtag,

Blessed.

Meanwhile, divorces, demotions, and despair, or the challenges of making ends meet, these

show up rarely or not at all.

What is the effect of the sharp contrast between the worlds we are shown and the worlds we

ourselves inhabit?

We may remind ourselves that what we are seeing has been

airbrushed and filtered, but the contrast still burrows into our unconscious minds. Some researchers

have argued that this contrast produces in us nagging feelings of inferiority, shame and resentment.

It causes us to feel we never have enough and to reach endlessly for the next ring,

the next achievement, the next milestone.

The Costs of Chasing Perfection

This Week on Hidden Brain.

F. Scott Fitzgerald's masterpiece, the great Gatsby, describes the story of a man who desperately tried to climb the social ladder.

The final lines of the novel are amongst the most famous in literature. They read, Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter. Tomorrow we will run faster,

...