Cultural Differences in the Perception of a Three-Dimensional Ponzo Illusion

Abstract

An ecological hypothesis related to the Ponzo illusion is that people who show a large susceptibility are misapplying cues that are valid in their natural environments with which they have everyday experience. Past cross-cultural research supporting this hypothesis has been based on two-dimensional stimuli. A better test of the hypothesis would be based on judgments of three-dimensional, natural-world stimuli. Judges from urbanized areas in the United States (N = 21), from the Pacific islands (N = 21), and from urbanized areas in the Philippines (N = 10) viewed a three-dimensional version of the Ponzo illusion from a distance of 13.20 m. As predicted, Pacific Islanders showed less susceptibility to the illusion than judges from either of the two other two groups.