Almost all of us asked, “Who can look without blinking for a longer period of time?” We did the race. The moment you start looking at the pupil of your friend standing right in front of you, your mind is actually preparing for an interesting journey.
You would think it crazy if we told you that when you just give your attention to that person without focusing on a different point, your consciousness will start to disintegrate after a very short time, right? But this is true!
University of Urbino Dr. Giovanni B. Caputo carried out a successful experiment in 2015.
In the experiment involving 20 volunteers, 5 males and 15 females, Caputo paired the participants in pairs to examine the effect of focusing on a person’s face for a long time on the mind.
The participants were asked to look at their spouses for 10 minutes without taking their eyes off, under conditions of dim light and silence. The light was bright enough that people could see each other, but at the same time dim enough to weaken the perception of colors.
At the end of this 10-minute study, the participants were asked to fill out a form about how they felt during this process.
While all of the participants stated that they had great difficulty during the experiment, when the results of the form were examined and analyzed, the result was quite surprising.
Participants in the experiment generally stated that after a while, they began to see the person they were looking at carefully in very different ways, and that they had the perception that there were serious changes in the face of that person.
Let’s examine the research percentages in detail.
- 15% say that the face of the person sitting in front of them has become the face of a relative,
- 50% of them see their own face in the other person,
- 75% say that the person with whom they made eye contact for 10 minutes almost turned into a monster,
- 90% of the participants stated that they started to see unreal things in the process when they focused on the face of the other person.
So what is the real reason for this confusion in our minds?
At this point, the concept that will clear the question marks in our minds comes into play: Segregation! That is, in an environment where environmental stimuli are reduced to almost zero, in other words, when we begin to become independent from sensory stimuli, we begin to break away from reality. As our mind begins to think that it is liberated from our body, we can also experience hallucinations.
An optical illusion called Troxler Fading is also thought to have contributed to this situation. Although this concept called Troxler Fading may sound strange when you first hear it, in fact, we have all been exposed to this optical illusion somewhere.
Let’s experience the Troxler Effect together in this picture you see below.
If you are sure that you are in a distraction-free environment, focus on the red dot in the middle of the picture for 1 minute. After about 15-20 seconds, you will notice that the green circle begins to fade. In fact, towards the end of 1 minute, there will be almost no trace of the circle.
In a similar experiment, striking results were obtained when the participants focused on their reflections in the mirror this time. The majority of the participants stated that after about a few minutes, they started to see their own image in different ways, the parts of their face changed and they even looked like someone else. After the blink movement, it was noticed that the people returned to their perception of reality.
All experiments like these shine a light on the miraculous and yet unsolved nature of the human mind. You can also share with us in the comments what you experienced in the optical illusion example above.
Sources: Science Alert, Wikipedia
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