Quadrant Posted November 5, 2009 Report Share Posted November 5, 2009 This will change you forever. This was originally created by Peter Thompson, who is a professor at the University of York, England. It's called the Margaret Thatcher illusion. For those of you unfamiliar with the illusion, here's the gist. Have a look at this image of Margaret Thatcher. Although something is obviously not quite right about the image, it doesn't look terribly out of the ordinary. It's difficult to pinpoint the abnormality until the image is rotated right-side up.... The image is now grotesque. Why? It seems that we’re really bad at spotting facial elements which don’t meet our template. We don’t generally run into people with upside-down mouths and eyes in real life, so they don’t fit our schema and we don’t interpret what we see correctly. You can now readily notice that although the relative configuration of the eyes and mouth has been maintained, each element has been flipped upside-down. The illusion suggests that we are relatively insensitive to the specific features of a face during recognition (otherwise, the upside-down face would look abnormal). I think this is fascinating. What are your thoughts!? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hardaway Posted November 5, 2009 Report Share Posted November 5, 2009 Im well into Contemporary Art, So to me this is fascinating! Wasn't expecting that outcome to be perfectly honest, so looking back is baffling how the human eye can interperut things in such un-usual ways! Top post mate. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neuro Posted November 6, 2009 Report Share Posted November 6, 2009 Hmmm. Have to say I reacted pretty strongly to the second image (even though they're the same picture) - gave me goosebumps, I absolutely hate it. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Briggsy Posted November 6, 2009 Report Share Posted November 6, 2009 The image is now grotesque. Why? Because its a former UK Prime Minister? All UK Prime Ministers during my lifetime have looked grotesque Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
simonross46 Posted November 7, 2009 Report Share Posted November 7, 2009 Yeah that second picture f***** me up a bit as I scrolled down haha Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simcut Posted November 14, 2009 Report Share Posted November 14, 2009 holy s***, lol, that freaked me out! Scary Margaret, nooooo! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JasonB Posted November 14, 2009 Report Share Posted November 14, 2009 Saw an ep of QI tother day where they used these pictures, made me chuckle Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quadrant Posted June 11, 2011 Author Report Share Posted June 11, 2011 I saw this on another website the other day and it reminded me I'd posted it here. So I dug the thread up! It's strange how our brain works sometimes. Even though they're exactly the same picture, most people react pretty badly to the 2nd one for some reason. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Max Kane Posted June 11, 2011 Report Share Posted June 11, 2011 I actually noticed this the first time hand on heart Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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