Can optical illusions reveal your personality? Herts study debunks social media claims
Look at these ambiguous pictures.
According to social media posts, seeing the Duck first suggests you are emotional unstable and a pessimist, whereas seeing the Rabbit first indicates that you are a chronic procrastinator.
Similarly, seeing the Faces first here indicates a detail-oriented thinker whereas seeing the Vase first shows high levels of spontaneous decision making.
But is this really the case?
“These claims attract millions of views on social media but tend to be ignored by psychologists, and so we conducted the first study to examine them”, noted Richard Wiseman, professor of the public understanding of psychology at the University of Hertfordshire.
A total of 300 people, aged between 18 to 79, were recruited through a crowdsourcing platform.
Participants indicated how they perceived four of the most popular ambiguous pictures - the Duck-Rabbit, Vase-Faces, Younger-Older woman and Horse-Seal - and complete questionnaires about their personality and thinking style.
The results, published in the journal PeerJ, found little support for many of the claims made on social media. For example, there was no link between seeing the Duck and procrastination or seeing the Faces and being detail-oriented.
Prof Wiseman remarked: “We don’t have much insight into ourselves and so like anything that seems to tell us who we are. In that sense, this phenomenon is a modern-day version of going to a psychic.
“And we often convince ourselves that these claims are true by selectively remembering instances where the descriptions seem to fit”.
However, Prof Wiseman thinks that it is important to have an open mind.
His previous research showed that perception mattered, with more creative people tending to constantly switch between seeing the Rabbit and the Duck.
In addition, some of the new data from the current study revealed interesting relationships.
For instance, seeing the Duck first was associated with lower emotional stability and optimism, and seeing the Rabbit first was correlated with being outgoing, sociable, diligent, and meticulous.
“These are isolated but intriguing findings and should be followed up by other research” noted Prof Wiseman.