Silhouette Illusion And Left-Right Brains Myth Debunked
In the Silhouette Illusion (video at the bottom), a silhouetted woman is seen spinning on one foot, her leg extended. The appeal of the illusion is in the way the woman is spinning – she can be perceived as spinning clockwise or counter-clockwise.
A psychology professor has found that the way people perceive the Silhouette Illusion, a popular trick that went viral and has received substantial online attention, has little to do with the viewers' personality, or whether they are left- or right-brained, despite the fact that the illusion is often used to test these attributes in popular e-quizzes.
Instead, Niko Troje says that any reported preference for seeing the silhouette spinning clockwise rather than counter-clockwise is simply dependent upon the angle at which the viewer is seeing the image.
i-Pereception: The viewing-from-above bias and the silhouette illusion