2019/01/01 by Gernot Horstmann, Sebastian Loth · 1 citation
Neuroscience · Psychology · #Face Recognition and Perception #Visual perception and processing mechanisms #Aesthetic Perception and Analysis #Gaze #Painting #Illusion #Subject (documents) #Art #Perception #Ruler #Visual arts #Optical illusion #Psychology #Computer vision #Computer science #Cognitive psychology #Physics
paper · pdf · doi:10.1177/2041669518821702
openalex publication_date 2019/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
If the person depicted in an image gazes at the camera or painter, a viewer perceives this as being gazed at. The viewers’ perception holds irrespectively of their position relative to image. This is the Mona Lisa effect named after the subject of Leonardo’s famous painting La Gioconda. The effect occurs reliably but was not tested with Mona Lisa herself. Remarkably, viewers judged Mona Lisa’s gaze as directed to their right-hand side irrespectively of the image zoom, its horizontal position on screen, and the distance of the ruler that was used for measuring the gaze direction.