Müller-Lyer Illusion

Ilusions cause for fascination to the unknown, however, to the people who have knowledge of the deception they are seeing it seems quite clear. Illusions generally work by playing off presumptions our brain makes while looking at something and there are times where those presumptions may wrong. The Müller-Lyer illusion causes the viewer to think that some lines are longer when in reality they are the same size. The two separate lines have arrows at each end but on one line, the arrows are pointing towards the center while and on the other line, the arrows are pointing outward. The line with the arrows pointed towards the center typically appear to be longer. The psychological processes behind this is that the brain subconsciously thinks the line is further way and adds depth to the object when in reality there isn't any. While it may seem this geometric illusion can work on anyone, once tested on different cultures the …show more content…
Additionally, a short comprehension test of visual figures was done beforehand in order to validate the responses given. The findings of the article showed that the people of European decent had failed on viewing the lines as the same length on the Müller-Lyer illusion than the non-European samples. Comparing the European sample with the sample from Illinois showed that they were similar in the rate of failure of the Müller-Lyer test. The Sander Parallelogram on the other hand showed different results. The European and non-European had similar results in the Sander Parallelogram with the European having only a slightly higher fail rate. These results indicate that while the biological basis on how these cultures view the illusion is the same, the success or failure is a cross-cultural effect. The article suggests the reasoning of the finding is more systematic in