Higashiyama Atsuki and the “between-legs effect”

Just a few days ago I was reading "Thinking with demons," an excellent history of ideas about witchcraft in Europe, and was struck by the following passage about a 16th century drawing of three witches by Hans Baldung Grien:

Informing everything in the scene, and establishing iconographically that it is indeed a scene of witchcraft, is the gesture of the witch who, bent on one knee, stares backwards at the world through her own legs. According to a contemporary German proverb those who adopted the pose would be sure to catch sight of the devil. This is perhaps the reason why the motif is also found among the monsters and devils who populate two widely separated versions of that most demonological of picture subjects, the temptation of St Anthony—those of Hieronymus Bosch (c. 1490s) and Jacques Callot (1635).

So it was fascinating to learn from this news article that "There are also regions of Japan where the folklore says that one can see ghosts, the world of spirits and demons, or the future by looking upside down through one’s legs."

It seems like professor Higashiyama is really conducting research in perception, not so much psychology, as it is understood popularly. He also seems skeptical of what is commonly er perceived as psychological research- and I share his skepticism. FTA:

>> Many studies place importance on overt, conscious actions like seeing and listening. And some psychologists conclude that people are of one personality type or another based on questionnaires that lack evidence, and which are therefore indistinguishable from fortune-telling.

>> “So, people have biases in their understanding,” explains Higashiyama. “The same importance as placed on sight and hearing has to be placed on physical information as well, and conclusions must be based on evidence. Researchers need to be aware of the fact that the field of psychology runs the risk of changing people’s lives.”

> The horizontal-vertical illusion is a phenomenon in which the vertical line appears longer when a horizontal line and a vertical line of the same length are drawn. For example, it has been shown that when a building that is in fact 10 meters both along its frontage and in height is viewed, it seems to the viewer that the height is 1.4 times the width, making the building look 14 meters tall.

The first sentence is manifestly false. If you take the example image in the article and rotate it 90 degrees, so that the red line is horizontal and the black line is vertical, then it's still the red line that looks longer (admittedly I find the effect is a bit weaker). What's really going on is that the impact of black line's length is reduced by having something halfway along it, while the red line is unbroken.

Either the image represents a different illusion or (and I guess this is really it) it's not that vertical lines necessarily look longer, it's just that, in practice, they're more likely to be unbroken (like the red line) while horizontal lines are more likely to have other things visually impacting their apparent length.

I had heard of using this technique to show that the moon appearing larger on the horizon is just an optical illusion. If you look at it through your legs, it appears much smaller.

Also heard lying on your back and looking at the moon nearly straight up makes it look larger, but it didn't have a noticeable effect when I tried it.

While the Ig Nobel prizes always have a quirky bent to them, I'm glad that they have a focus on this kind of basic science research. Sometimes understanding the simple things more deeply makes all the difference.

It would be interesting to repeat the study using American Football centers.

They spend a significant portion of the game looking back between their legs, and in addition need to be able to judge accurately to hike the ball so the quarterback gets it correctly, especially when he is in the shotgun position.

This stuff seems more important than the prize indicates. It points to the physical body being as important as the mind's internal state when it comes to one's sense of self and the world around oneself. Also I like this statement:

> "Higashiyama has misgivings about current-day psychology. Many studies place importance on overt, conscious actions like seeing and listening. And some psychologists conclude that people are of one personality type or another based on questionnaires that lack evidence, and which are therefore indistinguishable from fortune-telling."

Struggling a bit to find the quote, but in Ken Burns' National Parks documentary, it mentions that John Muir used to bend over and look at things between his legs in order to see "the upness" of the world.

Interesting to see that there's research showing a real effect from this!

recently learned about postural restauration. seemingly the teeth and the hip-flexors are connected via the vestibular system. Which means, you can do all the excercises, chirpractics, yoga and so on, and still suffer back pain, because the hips don't relax.

The demonstration was: molars and canines have to have contact, if they don't the vestibular system is out of tilt, put a piece of plastic between them, hip flexors relax, hips get their mobility back, back pain goes away.

Tried it... worked!

edit:linebreak

IMHO, given the head is upside down, the ciliary muscle of the eye is having more difficulties for to freely adjust the crystalline lens due the blood pressure increment.

So I think the effect described in the article sounds more like a lack of strength, or a strength adapted to lower pressure conditions, while adjusting the lenses.

has this been checked?

> That is, the vertical measurement appeared longer than it is in reality. But when I had them view it while lying on their side, some of them reported that the vertical and the horizontal lengths looked the same. In other words, we discovered that when lying on one’s side, the horizontal-vertical vertical illusion does not occur

Anyone with a vertical monitor can tell you that :)

Fantastic read! I'm so glad that there is recognition for these types of quirky research, rooted in humanism.

I never heard of Ig Nobel Prizes before.

ref. Ig Nobel Prize https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ig_Nobel_Prize

ref. Winners list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ig_Nobel_Prize_winners

Is there something wrong with me or my brain? I looked through my legs in my living room and the distances and colors seemed the same as right side up.

Ah, the award made by the a former editor-in-chief of the Journal of Irreproducible Results and organized by the scientific humor magazine; Their moto is cool, makes you laugh then makes you think.

I was lucky to attend the ignobel award ceremony the year that the peace prize was awarded to the creator of the Stalin World amusement park. This was also roughly the same time period that the annals of improbable research founded the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists.

I’m sad that these important awards have never gained wider recognition, but perhaps they are too far ahead of their time.

What is the significance of "Ig"?

The prism goggles experiment is interesting, however is the effect of perspective ruled out? When looking between the legs the eyes are closer to the ground compared to just looking ahead while standing up, which could possibly explain why farther away objects look smaller.

You will never convince me that this article's nothing more than an elaborate prank by an old dude to get someone to take an absolutely sick ass pic.

[Higashiyama demonstrating between-the-legs viewing]

"The prize he was awarded was a large clock that was equipped with a hand that indicated the sixty-first second — the “leap second”—and minute and hour hands that puzzlingly indicated seconds. The prize money was $10 trillion, although the unit of currency was not US dollars but rather Zimbabwe dollars, which had been discontinued at the time he received the prize. In fact, the prize money was worth about ¥170."

I love the Ig Nobels