Three social scientists in 1956 sent a booklet of drawings, including 12 Müller-Lyer examples, to diverse communities worldwide. Researchers tested urban and rural populations in Johannesburg, the Kalahari, Mindoro, and an American college campus for perceptual responses to the illusion. Responses varied: Illinois students perceived the inward-capped line as longer, Zulu pastoralists showed a much weaker effect, and San foragers reported equal lengths. These outcomes indicate that susceptibility to a classic visual illusion differs across cultures and suggest that human visual processing is influenced by cultural and environmental factors.
It's one of the deepest mysteries of the human mind: Do we all see the world the same way? In 1956, three social scientists set out to answer this question. From their offices at Northwestern University, Donald Campbell and Melville Herskovits teamed up with Marshall Segall, of SyracuseUniversity, to coordinate an ambitious new investigation. They sent researchers on a mission to societies near and far,
Tucked into each of their suitcases was a booklet of drawings, including 12 examples of a prominent figure called the Müller-Lyer illusion. You may have seen it before: When two identical horizontal lines are capped with arrowheads pointing either inward or outward, the line with inward-facing arrowheads looks longer, even though it's not. At least, that's how the illusion works here in the United States.
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