Even if you’ve seen this optical illusion before, it might we worth another look, since now they’ve applied celebrity faces to this interesting phenomenon.
By simply focusing your eyes between two images that rapidly switch, simple features are exaggerated:
The effect seems to depend on processing each face in light of the others. By aligning the faces at the eyes and presenting them quickly, it becomes much easier to compare them, so the differences between the faces are more extreme. If someone has a large jaw, it looks almost ogre-like. If they have an especially large forehead, then it looks particularly bulbous. We’re conducting several experiments right now to figure out exactly what’s causing this effect.
Here is the first example, followed by the “celebrity version”:
The Flashed Face Distortion Effect
[tentblogger-youtube wM6lGNhPujE]
[tentblogger-youtube VT9i99D_9gI]
Interesting, isn’t it?
[via Matthew B. Thompson]
Eleanor says
Creeepy.
It also makes me think about how looking at media images all day long morphs our own self image. It’s not totally related in the brain, but it’s like a metaphor for body and face dysmorphia … innit?
Eric Dye says
Interesting, indeed!