Re: Do males and females see optical illusions differently and why?

Dear Kerri,

Thank you for your interesting question. Visual illusions are fascinating and they are still being studied by scientists around the world today!

The first study looking at differences between men and women in the perception of illusions was done by Porac et al. (1979). They compared the performance of 107 females and 114 males in the perception of twelve common geometrical illusions (especially the Muller-Lyer and the Poggendorff illusions; see the pictures) and decided that there was no difference between men and woman.

Two other studies reported no differences between men and women ( Beckett, 1990; Holland et al., 1990).

One recent study, however, reported differences between man and woman in the perception of a less known illusion called the "herringbone" illusioan (Rasmjou et al., 1999). They didn't find that one sex was better than the other; instead, they showed that men and women used the two sides of their brains (called hemispheres) differently when seeing illusions. For more details, look at the end of the text.

Researchers generally agree that the cognitive (intellectual) abilities of men and women are very similar in most respects. Still, it was shown that women tend to be better in verbal ability (speaking) and that men tend to be better in spatial tasks like orientation (Halpern, 1986).

I hope this helps! Good luck!

Benoit

More details on Rasmjou and al., (1999)
Did you know that our brain is devided in two parts, the right and the left "hemisphere". These two sides can be shown the illusion individually. They found that women saw the illusion as well with both hemispheres whereas men saw the illusion much better with their right-hemisphere! Many other studies confirm women usually show more balanced cerebral organisation (hemispheres of equal strength) whereas men tend to have more specialized hemispheres.

References:

• Beckett (1990) Perceptual and Motor Skills, 70, 51-56
• Halpern (1986) Sex Differences in cognitive abilities. Hilsdale:LEA
• Holland et al., (1990) Perceptual and Motor Skills, 71, 305-306
• Porac et al (1979) Perception, 8, 401-412
• Rasmjou et al (1999) Neuropsychologia, 1041-1047

Note added from admin: if you can't find the original references, try looking at this site (or look for individual illusions with a good search engine, like Google):

http://www.illusionworks.com/html/hall_of_illusions.html