People may be showing humility. Also, when you talk to them, you may be measuring something other than their mental self- representation -- maybe they are expre

People may be showing humility. Also, when you talk to them, you may be measuring something other than their mental self- representation -- maybe they are expressing where they think they are relative to society, whereas the experiment is measuring the delta between self-image and reality. tl;dr -- You can think yourself ugly, yet still not as ugly as you actually are!