The ‘skinny fat face illusion’ shows that turning an image upside down can make anyone’s face look longer and thinner.
The trick is possible because the brain’s perception of internal facial features, such as the eyes, mouth, and nose, is used to judge the shape of the face, and when it’s the other way around, that judgment isn’t possible.
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You may notice that the inverted image appears thinner than the normal image
After comparing the upside down image of James Corden’s face right side up, you might notice that this upside down looks like a completely different face.
Psychologist Peter Thompson of the University of York used Corden’s image to show that, although the images are identical, his upside-down round face appears elongated next to the right-facing image.
The illusion seems to work on round or thin faces, despite its name.
“It’s not the case that an inverted face reverts to an average shape where fat faces look thinner upside down, while thin faces look fatter,” Thompson and fellow psychologist Jennie Wilson concluded.
“The fact that the illusion appears to occur for most face shapes is disputed with regard to the horizontal-vertical illusion.”
The horizontal-vertical illusion is a common misperception that vertical lines are longer than horizontal lines, even when they are both the same length.
The illusion of a fat and thin face is reminiscent of the Thatcher effect, which also plays with the perception of inverted facial features.
Images that play on the Thatcher effect often leave some facial features, such as eyes or lips, face up, while the rest of the image is turned upside down.
Although half of the features are not reversed, viewers can rarely tell the difference because it is more difficult to detect local changes in features on an upside-down face.
The effect has been around since 1980 when a scientist created what is believed to be the first iteration.
It appeared in one of Thompson’s documents and contained a modified image of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
The shot of her face was flipped 180 degrees while her eyes and mouth were upside down.
Inverted it appeared normal, while upright it appeared grotesque, resulting in an illusion sometimes called the Thatcher effect.
In other optical illusion news, the first thing you see in this optical illusion could mean you’re a total control freak.
Viewers were noted to have “headaches” from this confusing image.
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Categories: Optical Illusion
Source: HIS Education