An unusual image of singer Adele recently went viral. The snapshot, taken from the cover of her album 25, appears normal at first glance but is a great example of the phenomenon known as the ‘Thatcher Effect.’
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The photo, presented upside down, only looks strange when you turn it the other way and realize that the singer’s mouth and eyes are on the opposite side of where they should be.
However, it’s interesting that it seems like there’s nothing wrong with the snapshot when viewed upside down. Want to know why this happens?
A Facebook user who shared the image in August explained the Thatcher Effect, stating that this illusion highlights a flaw in how our brains function.
According to him, we cannot process an inverted face because we are programmed to recognize faces upright.
“We create a mental map recognizing the face in pieces: eyes, mouth, and nose. So when a ‘Thatcherized’ image is presented to us upside down, it is not processed properly,” explained Thom Edwards.
Basically, we know the image is upside down, but since we rarely encounter upside-down faces, we haven’t evolved to interpret expressions on them.
As facial features appear normal, our brains assume the rest of the face is too, which is why we don’t see anything unusual until we turn the face in the right direction.
The Thatcher Effect is named after British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, in whose photograph it was first demonstrated in 1980 by Peter Thompson, a psychology professor at the University of York.
