Are These Walls The Same Height? Your Answer Depends On Where You're From
Which wall is bigger? The Penguin PressThe following is an excerpt from Adam Alter's new book Drunk Tank Pink: And Other Unexpected Forces That Shape How We Think, Feel, and Behave, available on Amazon. In the late 1800s, German psychiatrist Franz Müller-Lyer designed one of the world's most famous visual illusions. The illusion became popular because it was easy to re-create and very difficult to shake. It began with a simple question: Which of the following two vertical lines is longer? If you're like almost everyone whom Müller-Lyer tested, Line B will appear longer than Line A. In fact, the two lines are identical in length, as this doctored version of the illusion shows: For decades, vision researchers assumed that the illusion told us something fundamental about human vision. When they showed the illusion to people with normal vision, they were convinced that the line with the inward-pointing arrows would seem longer...