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Higashiyama Atsuki and the “between-legs effect”
- Mistletoe 3y agoIs there something wrong with me or my brain? I looked through my legs in my living room and the distances and colors seemed the same as right side up.
- bombcar 3y agoI think you need to try outside so the distances are greater. Or it’s all a practical joke and you have to do it outside so people will laugh.
- derekp7 3y agoThere is most likely something to this. A dramatic example I've seen is where you take a picture of a head, and invert the mouth and view the picture upside down (so the head is pointing down, but the mouth is still right side up). It looks slightly off, but no more than any other picture that has been altered. Now flip the picture back around right side up (mouth upside down) and if you aren't expecting it then it will quite likely make you jump back in horror. It actually hits some deeply rooted part of our primitive brain that just messes you up. (I just looked this up again, it is the Thatcher effect, and to me it is more frightening when the face is smiling).
- bombcar 3y agoReminds me of the copypasta that’s says the “uncanny valley” indicates that in some time during our evolution we had good reason to identify something that looked human but wasn’t.
- kaftan-permans 3y agoHere’s a demonstration with some more info: https://michaelbach.de/ot/fcs-thompsonThatcher/ https://michaelbach.de/ot/fcs-thompsonThatcher/
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- lll-o-lll 3y agoWorked for me. Couldn’t it be something about the framing of the legs leading to a different processing of perspective?
- john2x 3y agoWhen I was learning to draw, one technique to help spot errors is to flip the drawing upside down. This made misaligned features, bad proportions, weird perspective issues immediately jump out. Maybe it's the same effect.
- recursivecaveat 3y agoIt sounds like the 'prism-goggles' from the article's experiment control for the effect of just looking at it upside down. Clearly what's needed is to hang some students by their feet and send some others to space to see if it's the inner-ear effects or the posture that changes your perception :P
- SamBam 3y agoArt teachers also have people copy existing art upside down, or turn their still life upside down (if possible). By trying to reproduce something upside down, your brain doesn't do as much pre-processing and chunking into preconceived shapes, and you're forced to actually look at the shape of the thing.
- numpad0 3y agoYou can do left to right for jpegs too. It's astonishing it works.
- polishdude20 3y agoAlso potentially the increased cranial pressure changing the size of the eyeball?
- Vicinity9635 3y ago[dead]
- cstrat 3y agoI would think the rush of blood to your head and eyes plays part in this phenomenon (if it really is a thing...)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- keyle 3y agoFantastic read! I'm so glad that there is recognition for these types of quirky research, rooted in humanism. I never heard of Ig Nobel Prizes before. ref. Ig Nobel Prize https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ig_Nobel_Prize https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ig_Nobel_Prize ref. Winners list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ig_Nobel_Prize_winners https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ig_Nobel_Prize_winners
- mmastrac 3y agoThey've been around since the early days of the internet, slightly younger than the Darwin awards. You're one of today's lucky 10,000. :)
- EugeneOZ 3y agoJust in case, to explain the number: https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/
- gmiller123456 3y agoThey used to get a lot more attention, even mentioned in a lot of main stream media. Not sure why, but I don't recall hearing much about them even on "nerd" sites in many years. I just occasionally think to look up and see what's won.
- jxf 3y agoWhile the Ig Nobel prizes always have a quirky bent to them, I'm glad that they have a focus on this kind of basic science research. Sometimes understanding the simple things more deeply makes all the difference.
- gmiller123456 3y agoI had heard of using this technique to show that the moon appearing larger on the horizon is just an optical illusion. If you look at it through your legs, it appears much smaller. Also heard lying on your back and looking at the moon nearly straight up makes it look larger, but it didn't have a noticeable effect when I tried it.
- jmpeax 3y agoWhat is the significance of "Ig"?
- joker_minmax 3y ago"Ignoble" means that something is not noble, so they're just parodying the name of the Nobel prize with a play-on-words (edited for clarification.)
- cjbgkagh 3y agoFrom Latin, meaning the lack of something.
- EForEndeavour 3y agoMade me dream up the (it turns out) false etymology of "ignite" deriving from ig-, lack of, and nite, nonstandard spelling variant of night, combining to mean "remove darkness."
- mr_toad 3y agoWell the Romans loved their false etymologies, so it seems fitting.
- SamBam 3y agoCan you explain? I didn't even know Romans thought about etymologies.
- mr_toad 3y agoThey put quite a lot of though into it, and so did the Greeks. They thought that the origins of words could shed light (sometime divine light) on meaning, and they used etymology to tell stories and offer moral guidance. The problem is that many classical (and later) scholars, historians and poets were prone to uncritically repeating stories without doing any fact checking, or just making stuff up to fit the narrative. The same is true for their etymologies. Socrates and Plutarch in particular have reputations for their imaginative etymologies.
- nadermx 3y agoAh, the award made by the a former editor-in-chief of the Journal of Irreproducible Results and organized by the scientific humor magazine; Their moto is cool, makes you laugh then makes you think.
- dmbche 3y ago"The prize he was awarded was a large clock that was equipped with a hand that indicated the sixty-first second — the “leap second”—and minute and hour hands that puzzlingly indicated seconds. The prize money was $10 trillion, although the unit of currency was not US dollars but rather Zimbabwe dollars, which had been discontinued at the time he received the prize. In fact, the prize money was worth about ¥170." I love the Ig Nobels
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- photochemsyn 3y agoThis stuff seems more important than the prize indicates. It points to the physical body being as important as the mind's internal state when it comes to one's sense of self and the world around oneself. Also I like this statement: > "Higashiyama has misgivings about current-day psychology. Many studies place importance on overt, conscious actions like seeing and listening. And some psychologists conclude that people are of one personality type or another based on questionnaires that lack evidence, and which are therefore indistinguishable from fortune-telling."
- plorkyeran 3y agoSome of the prizes are for satire, but many Ig Nobel prizes are for research that sounds absurd but actually had a valuable discovery of some sort. Despite the jokey vibe they do try to give attention to things which deserve the attention.
- thedailymail 3y agoJust a few days ago I was reading "Thinking with demons," an excellent history of ideas about witchcraft in Europe, and was struck by the following passage about a 16th century drawing of three witches by Hans Baldung Grien: Informing everything in the scene, and establishing iconographically that it is indeed a scene of witchcraft, is the gesture of the witch who, bent on one knee, stares backwards at the world through her own legs. According to a contemporary German proverb those who adopted the pose would be sure to catch sight of the devil. This is perhaps the reason why the motif is also found among the monsters and devils who populate two widely separated versions of that most demonological of picture subjects, the temptation of St Anthony—those of Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1490s) and Jacques Callot (1635). So it was fascinating to learn from this news article that "There are also regions of Japan where the folklore says that one can see ghosts, the world of spirits and demons, or the future by looking upside down through one’s legs."
- tome 3y agoThis seems to be the drawing in question https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Witches_%28Hans_Baldung%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Witches_%28Hans_Baldung%29 But where is the witch described in the passage? I don't see anything like it.
- Obsnold 3y agoI think it's this one: https://www.mediastorehouse.co.uk/fine-art-finder/artists/unknown-artist/witches-drawing-hans-baldung-dit-grien-1484-1545-22286372.html https://www.mediastorehouse.co.uk/fine-art-finder/artists/un...
- nerdponx 3y agoThis is oddly modern looking for being 500 years old.
- runesofdoom 3y agoI have read (though I can't cite a source at the moment) that what is sometimes taken as limits on talent/skill/material limits on medieval art was more often a stylistic choice.
- kuchenbecker 3y ago> That is, the vertical measurement appeared longer than it is in reality. But when I had them view it while lying on their side, some of them reported that the vertical and the horizontal lengths looked the same. In other words, we discovered that when lying on one’s side, the horizontal-vertical vertical illusion does not occur Anyone with a vertical monitor can tell you that :)
- dbtc 3y agoEvery time I rotate mine to vertical it becomes GIGANTIC
- Pompidou 3y agoIs this some saucy humor ?
- kuchenbecker 3y agoNo, you can literally visualize the quoted effect by turning your head sideways to look at your monitor vs having it vertical.
- dbtc 3y agoThe humor is in YOU ;)
- jbandela1 3y agoIt would be interesting to repeat the study using American Football centers. They spend a significant portion of the game looking back between their legs, and in addition need to be able to judge accurately to hike the ball so the quarterback gets it correctly, especially when he is in the shotgun position.
- sema4hacker 3y agoI think centers looking between their legs is only true for long-snappers hiking the ball to punters and place kickers. Otherwise, even for the shotgun, centers are looking ahead.
- aszantu 3y agorecently learned about postural restauration. seemingly the teeth and the hip-flexors are connected via the vestibular system. Which means, you can do all the excercises, chirpractics, yoga and so on, and still suffer back pain, because the hips don't relax. The demonstration was: molars and canines have to have contact, if they don't the vestibular system is out of tilt, put a piece of plastic between them, hip flexors relax, hips get their mobility back, back pain goes away. Tried it... worked! edit:linebreak
- jmholla 3y agoI'm a little confused by your phrasing: > The demonstration was: molars and canines have to have contact, if they don't the vestibular system is out of tilt, put a piece of plastic between them, hip flexors relax, hips get their mobility back, back pain goes away. Does that mean if they aren't touching, your hip flexors relax? Or the piece of plastic makes your molars and canines touch which causes your hip flexors to relax?
- aszantu 3y agoWhen molars and canines touch, the hip flexors can relax. When you lost a tooth or had a correction in your youth, they might not fit correctly.
- shot_codes 3y agoVery interesting. Do you by any chance have some supporting resources that you would be willing to share?
- aszantu 3y agojust some youtubes and this https://www.posturalrestoration.com/ https://www.posturalrestoration.com/
- zuno 3y agoThank you for your comment. Interesting! Would this be of interest to you? "Dental Treatment for Low Back and Hip Pain in a Long-Distance Runner: A Case Report" at https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation.aspx?paperid=107530 https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation.aspx?paperid=...
- YeGoblynQueenne 3y agoIt seems like professor Higashiyama is really conducting research in perception, not so much psychology, as it is understood popularly. He also seems skeptical of what is commonly er perceived as psychological research- and I share his skepticism. FTA: >> Many studies place importance on overt, conscious actions like seeing and listening. And some psychologists conclude that people are of one personality type or another based on questionnaires that lack evidence, and which are therefore indistinguishable from fortune-telling. >> “So, people have biases in their understanding,” explains Higashiyama. “The same importance as placed on sight and hearing has to be placed on physical information as well, and conclusions must be based on evidence. Researchers need to be aware of the fact that the field of psychology runs the risk of changing people’s lives.”
- stdbrouw 3y agoScepticism is great, but that's perhaps not how I would describe praising a quote from an Ig Nobel prize winner that discards the entire field of personality psychology just because it happens to align with what you already believe.
- YeGoblynQueenne 3y agoTo clarify, I'm skeptical of the same thing he expresses skepticism about, not of his skepticism.
- red_trumpet 3y agoThe perception article in Wikipedia[1] is part of the psychology series. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perception
- user_named 3y agoThat's a very verbose akshually you have there
- YeGoblynQueenne 3y agoa wat
- drtgh 3y agoIMHO, given the head is upside down, the ciliary muscle of the eye is having more difficulties for to freely adjust the crystalline lens due the blood pressure increment. So I think the effect described in the article sounds more like a lack of strength, or a strength adapted to lower pressure conditions, while adjusting the lenses. has this been checked?
- quietbritishjim 3y ago> The horizontal-vertical illusion is a phenomenon in which the vertical line appears longer when a horizontal line and a vertical line of the same length are drawn. For example, it has been shown that when a building that is in fact 10 meters both along its frontage and in height is viewed, it seems to the viewer that the height is 1.4 times the width, making the building look 14 meters tall. The first sentence is manifestly false. If you take the example image in the article and rotate it 90 degrees, so that the red line is horizontal and the black line is vertical, then it's still the red line that looks longer (admittedly I find the effect is a bit weaker). What's really going on is that the impact of black line's length is reduced by having something halfway along it, while the red line is unbroken. Either the image represents a different illusion or (and I guess this is really it) it's not that vertical lines necessarily look longer, it's just that, in practice, they're more likely to be unbroken (like the red line) while horizontal lines are more likely to have other things visually impacting their apparent length.
- koromak 3y agoThe experiment with the 10m square building shouldn't have this problem, if it holds true.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- belter 3y agoYou rotate the image but maintain the black line halfway and not centered? How is that a falsifying example of the first phrase? "Is the Horizontal-Vertical Illusion Mainly a By-Product of Petter’s Rule?" - https://www.mdpi.com/2073-8994/12/1/6 https://www.mdpi.com/2073-8994/12/1/6
- Supermancho 3y agoAs I understand it, rotating the image is not the same as inverting your head via bending. The issue is purely biological, if it exists at all.
- jwestbury 3y agoStruggling a bit to find the quote, but in Ken Burns' National Parks documentary, it mentions that John Muir used to bend over and look at things between his legs in order to see "the upness" of the world. Interesting to see that there's research showing a real effect from this!
- emtel 3y agoI was lucky to attend the ignobel award ceremony the year that the peace prize was awarded to the creator of the Stalin World amusement park. This was also roughly the same time period that the annals of improbable research founded the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists. I’m sad that these important awards have never gained wider recognition, but perhaps they are too far ahead of their time.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- planede 3y agoThe prism goggles experiment is interesting, however is the effect of perspective ruled out? When looking between the legs the eyes are closer to the ground compared to just looking ahead while standing up, which could possibly explain why farther away objects look smaller.
- pharrington 3y agoYou will never convince me that this article's nothing more than an elaborate prank by an old dude to get someone to take an absolutely sick ass pic. [Higashiyama demonstrating between-the-legs viewing]