A new illusion of height and width: taller people are perceived as thinner

Abstract

It is commonly said that tall people look thinner. Here, we asked whether an illusion exists such that the taller of two equally wide stimuli looks thinner, and conversely whether the thinner of two equally tall stimuli looks taller. In five experiments, participants judged the horizontal or vertical extents of two identical bodies, rectangles, or cylinders that differed only in their vertical or horizontal extents. Our results confirmed the folk wisdom that being tall makes you look thinner. We similarly found that being thin makes you look taller, although this effect was less pronounced. The same illusion was present for filled rectangles and cylinders, but it was consistently stronger for both photographs and silhouettes of the human body, raising the question of why the human form should be more prone to this illusion.

The next step in optimising the stair horizontal-vertical illusion: Does a perception-action link exist in older adults?

“…shows rectangles of the same height are perceived taller when narrower and shorter when wider (Beck, Emanuele and Savazzi, 2013). This effect may have been present here with the riser stripes (viewed as rectangles).…”

Females present higher dose‐adjusted drug concentrations of metoprolol and allopurinol/oxypurinol than males

“…In the metoprolol subpopulation only, height was another anthropometric parameter that predicted lower dosing of metoprolol in taller patients. This observation correlates with the current perception that being tall makes someone look thinner 39 and reinforces the imprecision of anthropometry visual estimates as the only basis for drug dosing. Our results indicate that weight remains a more appropriate predictor of drug concentrations.…”

Children with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS): 3D-Analysis of Palatal Depth and 3D-Metric Facial Length

“…The impression of a high arched palate in patients with FAS, which is described in a study by Jackson et al [29], might therefore be subjective in nature and a visual illusion because of transversal underdevelopment of the maxillary complex, which can be found in patients with FAS [19]. This phenomenon, i.e., that the visual impression of the vertical dimension can be dependent on the transverse dimension, has been described in the literature [30,31]. However, studies suggest that palatal growth and change in palatal depth may be age-dependent [32].…”