Wednesday, May 02, 2007

Ebbinghaus Illusion

This is for those of us who have, at some point or the other in their lives, been hit hard/irritated by comparison with their peers.

The fact is that perception is relative as the Ebbinghaus Illusion shows. (See this Wikipedia write-up.) And this is explained best by an image of two identical circles (here). One is surrounded by giant circles while the other is surrounded by tiny ones. As Vilayanur Ramachandran puts it, in his 'Phantoms in the Brain': "To most eyes, the two central disks do not look the same size. The one surrounded by the big disks looks about 30 per cent smaller that the one with small disks - an illusion called size contrast." In this case, the orange circle to your left seems smaller to the one to your right.

Perception is always dependent on the surrounding context.

So, if you have been on the receiving end as a result of comparisons with your peers, just remember that you could be just as good (or bad) as the person you are being compared with!