Thatcher Effect - Illustrated by Dan Larimer

What is the Thatcher Effect?

According to Wikipedia, "The Thatcher effect or Thatcher illusion is a phenomenon where it becomes more difficult to detect local feature changes in an upside-down face, despite identical changes being obvious in an upright face".

In other words, your brain is too stupid to easily recognize changes to the eyes, mouth, nose, etc. when viewing an upside-down face.

Let's see the Thatcher effect in action!

Below we start with an image of @dantheman that I am sure most Steemians have seen at some point in time.

Now we will simply flip him upside-down.

Does it look funny to you?
I hope not because it shouldn't.

Okay now is where the fun begins.

Using Photoshop I have inverted @dantheman's eyes and mouth. As you can see in the image below, Dan may look a bit odd but your brain is not screaming that something is wrong.

That is until we vertically flip the edited image to reveal what looks like a monster.





I think I prefer the original @dantheman





Thanks Dan!

Sort:  

lol, I suddenly have the urge to want to see more photos of people I know and what they would look like as in the 4th example. :D

This was really interesting! Its strange how the brain makes the inverted image still seem pretty normal when its upside down but flip it around and it seems so wrong!

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