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Why Pretty Girls Can Sometimes Be Made Ugly by the Camera

by Tanya Thomas on Jul 13 2011 9:54 AM

 Why Pretty Girls Can Sometimes Be Made Ugly by the Camera
Scientists have uncovered a bizarre optical illusion that appears to make pretty girls look ugly.
The "flashed face distortion effect" explains that when a series of average to attractive looking faces are rapidly flashed at viewers, their brain distorts them so that they appear ugly and even grotesque.

"The degree of distortion is greatest for faces that deviate from the others in the set on a particular dimension (e.g. if a person has a large forehead, it looks particularly large)," the Daily Mail quoted the study as stating.esearcher Sean C Murphy accidentally discovered the effect and studied with colleagues Jason M Tangen and Matthew B Thompson.

Thompson said the effect may "have something to do with relative encoding."

"That is, forcing people to encode each face in light of the others.

"By eye-aligning the faces, it becomes much easier to compare their shape and the relative location of their features, so the differences between them become more evident," he explained.

The finding was published in the on-line journal Perceptions.

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Source-ANI


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