Distorted
Stripes
There are no curves in this imageI
n 1889 German psychologist Franz Carl
Müller-Lyer published his famous eponymous
illusion, in which two identical line segments
appear to have unequal lengths when one is
capped by “arrowheads” and the other by “arrow
tails.” Since its inception, the Müller-Lyer illusion
has inspired hundreds of research studies, cap-
tured the imagination of scientists and nonspe-
cialists alike, and made its way into countless
popular illusion books and introductory psycholo-
gy volumes. You might think that there isn’t
much left to say about this particular form
of misperception.
But you’d be wrong.
Just as the new decade started, on January 3,
2020, San Francisco–based data analyst Chris
Said shared on Twitter a new—and soon-to-
become viral—version of the Müller-Lyer illusion,
based on a previous variant created by Italian
artist Gianni A. Sarcone.Susana Martinez-Conde and Stephen Macknik are professors of
ophthalmology at the State University of New York and the organizers of
the Best Illusion of the Year Contest. They have co-authored Sleights of
Mind: What the Neuroscience of Magic Reveals about Our Everyday
Deceptions and Champions of Illusion: The Science behind Mind-Boggling
Images and Mystifying Brain Puzzles.ILLUSIONS
CHRIS SAID; DISTORTED STRIPES, MODIFIED FROM @GSARCONE