{"id":1028,"date":"2014-04-27T20:50:38","date_gmt":"2014-04-28T00:50:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/?p=1028"},"modified":"2017-09-06T11:59:41","modified_gmt":"2017-09-06T15:59:41","slug":"good-news-for-tall-people-youre-perceived-as-thinner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/2014\/04\/27\/good-news-for-tall-people-youre-perceived-as-thinner\/","title":{"rendered":"Good news for tall people! You’re perceived as thinner!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Tall<\/a><\/p>\n

People say all the time that tall people look thinner. Being tall and thin is valued in our society and because both traits are valued they are most likely related, where one could affect the other. \u00a0We often hear that tall people look thinner. Is this a real illusion or just an urban myth?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Before we move on, let me define perception for you. When you perceive things, you are essentially organizing, identifying, and interpreting information gathered from your different senses. A lot of perception, however, is driven by expectations and prior knowledge. This means that what you expect to see and what you already know influences what you actually perceive.<\/p>\n

Beck, Emanuele, and Savazzi (2013) recently published an article exploring this question of how height and width influence perception. They conducted three experiments to see if height influences how people judge width (whether tall bodies are perceived as thin and short bodies are perceived as wide). They also investigated whether width influences how people judge height (whether thin bodies are perceived as tall and wide bodies are perceived as short).<\/p>\n

In their first experiment they showed participants two images of human bodies and asked them to either decide which was taller or which was wider (see below for a sample stimuli). For half of the participants, the two bodies were different heights on all the trials, and on 1\/3 of the trials, the critical trials, \u00a0the width was the same. Participants were asked to select which body was wider. For the other half of the participants, the two bodies were always different widths, and on the critical 1\/3 of the trials, the height was the same. Those participants were asked to select which body was taller on each trial. The experimenters measured participants’ preference for one image over the other on the critical trials, in which one dimension (height or width) was the same.<\/p>\n

\"13423_2013_454_Fig1_HTML-e1399049743175\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The experimenters found that participants did in fact consider the taller body as narrower and the shorter body as wider! They also found that the illusion goes the other direction as well, meaning participants assessed the narrower body as taller and the wider body as shorter, although this effect was not a great as the other illusion.\u00a0So, what does this all really mean? Well, it means that humans perceive tall people as thinner and short people as wider. This a fortunate illusion for some, and an unfortunate one for others (i.e. short people like myself)!<\/p>\n

The experimenters wanted to further investigate this illusion and whether it could be seen with objects as well as bodies (see below for a sample of the stimuli used). So, for their second experiment, they used rectangles instead of bodies. Everything else about the experiment was the same. They found the same result with rectangles, however, the illusion was not nearly as strong as it had been with bodies. Why would that be?<\/p>\n

\"13423_2013_454_Fig2_HTML-e1399045749522\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The researchers explored, in their third experiment, whether the level of depth and detail the bodies had, in comparison to the rectangles, contributed to this difference between bodies and shapes. To assess this, they followed the same experimental design as before, but used silhouettes of bodies (no depth or detail) and shaded cylinders (added depth and detail) (see below for a sample of the stimuli used). Their results showed the same illusion as before, but it was much stronger for the silhouettes of the bodies than the shaded cylinders. So, it is not detail or depth that caused the illusion to be stronger with bodies than shapes.<\/p>\n

\"13423_2013_454_Fig3_HTML-e1399045775685\"<\/a>\"13423_2013_454_Fig3_HTML1-e1399045810751\"<\/a><\/p>\n

So, why is this illusion so much greater for bodies than for shapes? The authors examined some similar illusions, trying to explain why they got the results that they did. But, none of the explanations really fit and \u00a0it is still largely unknown why there is this difference. One possibility, however, is that our experiences in the world influence how we perceive human bodies. As we know, perception is driven by expectations and prior knowledge. Because our culture values tall and thin bodies, we may perceive bodies differently than other objects, based on height and width. Future research should explore if this illusion is still present for actual, three-dimensional bodies, to see how relevant this illusion is to real life.<\/p>\n

To read the full study, click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

References<\/p>\n

Beck, D. M., Emanuele, B., & Savazzi, S. (2013). A new illusion of height and width: Taller people are perceived as thinner. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 20<\/i>, 1154-1160. doi: 10.3758\/s13423-013-0454-8.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

People say all the time that tall people look thinner. Being tall and thin is valued in our society and because both traits are valued they are most likely related, where one could affect the other. \u00a0We often hear that tall people look thinner. Is this a real illusion or just an urban myth?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4076,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[80218],"tags":[12419],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1028"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4076"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1028"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1028\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3790,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1028\/revisions\/3790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}