Optical illusions can leave us perplexed for a long time, perplexing us with color, pattern, item location, and other factors.
Some may be humorously unpleasant, while others can be downright perplexing. Some even appear to give hints about who we are. This is one such picture that appears to create two distinct figures depending on who you ask.
What do you notice when you look at this photograph? Do you think you’re staring into the eyes of an elderly woman? Do you notice a young woman gazing off into the distance?
It’s one of the most well-known optical illusions, splitting our Facebook pages on a regular basis. Experts believe that what you see is entirely dependent on your age.
According to a research done in 2018, older individuals see the older lady figure, while younger ones notice the younger figure.
Two psychology professors at Flinders University in Australia published a study including 393 participants. The participants were ranging in age from 18 to 68, with an average age of 32.
The participants were given the image titled “My Wife or My Mother-in-Law” for half a second. And then they were asked to report the gender and age of the person they initially noticed.
The majority of the participants stated the younger woman’s figure was the first thing they noticed.
The researchers wanted to see if ‘own-age biases influence the first perception of a picture on a subconscious level.’
“What we discovered was that young individuals tended to perceive the young lady in the photograph, while older people tended to see the old lady,” one of the researchers, Professor Mike Nicholls, explained.
In case you’re wondering where the two photos are, the older woman’s nose is really the younger woman’s chin. The younger woman’s ear is what looks to be the elder woman’s eye. As a result, if you were looking at the younger woman, you’d be looking at her side profile rather than her face. The younger lady wears a beautiful hat, while the elder lady is hooded.
But how does this relate to our age?
“Everyone has their own in-groups and out-groups”, Nicholls added.
“Young individuals have an in-group that focuses on other young people, whereas elderly people have an in-group that focuses on older people. We believe you can detect this subconscious bias in one of the photos.”
“So even individuals who think they’re being fair or balanced when it comes to a person’s age, what we’re finding is that it appears to be subconscious.”
When the participants were divided into the oldest 10% and the youngest 10%, the researchers discovered that the majority of the older group saw the older lady first, while the younger group saw the younger woman first.
To me, this seems like a reasonable conclusion, but I’m not sure why it took me more than 15 minutes to find out where the younger lady was.
What image pops up when you look at the picture? Let us know.
