‘The sitting room was cold and quiet. He took off his jacket and hung it on the coat stand. There was a mantelpiece over the hearth. In the middle of it, a bell jar containing a stuffed squirrel stood taking pride of place. His mother loved it. Tarryn couldn’t stand the thing. Looking into the glass he caught a glimpse of his reflection. The sight made his fingers twitch. The features that looked back at him were those of a being he did not recognise.’

Excerpt from ‘We Men of Ash and Shadow’

When Italian psychologist Giovanni Caputo invited fifty participants to take part in an experiment as part of a study conducted in 2010, the results gave an intriguing insight into how we perceive our images as reflected in a mirror. 

The idea of spending a significant amount of time staring unflinchingly at your reflection may not be everyone’s idea of a fun way to spend an afternoon, but having read about the ‘strange face illusion’ and becoming curious, I decided that I needed to try it for myself.

The original experiment saw all participants tasked with staring at their reflection in a mirror under dim light, for an extended time. After about ten minutes (in some cases less) the subjects reported seeing distorted versions of their faces as their reflections began to morph and alter. While some saw basic changes such as blurring, distortion, or shape change – others saw more prolific changes. Some subjects spoke of seeing their faces become those of family members or ancestors, whilst some reported their reflections taking on animal-like or monstrous qualities.

Many of the subjects reported feeling intense emotions when perceiving these visual changes. Some experienced dissonance or a detachment from their reflection. Others reported feeling comforted or as though they were being ‘watched over’ by a benevolent third party. Being of a curious disposition (and keen to discover my inner monster), I naturally decided that I should attempt to emulate the experiment at home to see what results it would incur.

I used a standard makeup mirror at my kitchen table, closed the blinds and shut off the lights so that I was sitting in low light, the small amount of natural sunlight peeking through the shutters being what I hoped would pass for ‘dim’ light. 

For the next several minutes I sat and stared at my face. Part of me was concerned that, because I knew the purpose of the experiment, the results would not be as authentic. After all, how could I be sure which changes to what I was seeing were as result of my imagination and what were as part of optical illusion?

I attempted to counter this by making sure that I did not allow my mind to wander too far from the focal point of the mirror – a little music in the background helped to keep my mind in check.

It did not take long before I began to experience some slight effects. It started with minor distortions, my eyebrows and eyes seeming to lower and lift with no discernible movement having physically been made. The closest comparison I can draw is that it began to look vaguely pixelated, as though sections of my face were flickering as if trying to fit together but with a slight time delay.

I also noticed that the tone and coloration to certain parts of my skin became greyer and appeared oily. To clarify, when I say ‘oily’ I do not mean in the traditional sense that skin can be a little ‘shiny’ or ‘greasy’. This was more like a sheen of diesel oil – darker, and more iridescent. This particularly happened in areas of my face where there were deep contours such as around my cheeks and nostrils.

As fun as this was to watch, I didn’t feel that this was particularly any sort of exciting illusion. Looking at anything for an extended period will result in the eye muscle movement that can cause these effects. I’d love to have been able to attribute it to my having found some innate magical shape-shifting ability, but sadly I know too much about the way that neurons work. Damn you, science.

Around the seven minute mark I started getting much more exciting results. The biggest change for me was seeing the bridge of my nose begin to widen. At certain points my face became almost Neanderthal-like, with my brow lowering and becoming significantly heavier and my nose becoming more prominent and flatter. From this point my eyes became a lot rounder and for a very short period my face took on almost deer/fawn-like quality. In essence I began to look very much like I’d just spent several hours being plastered with movie-set quality prosthetic makeup. It was really really interesting.

The most disappointing part of this illusion is that it relies heavily on your conscious mind not questioning what it is seeing – which means that the moment you realise something is not right, your brain attempts to correct the image. I know I experienced seeing these changes, but each one was only fleeting and lasted for a second or so at most.

As far as emotional reactions go, although the experiment was extremely interesting and worked far better than I had anticipated, I can’t say that it elicited any sort of emotional response. Again, this may just be because I already knew what the potential effects might be. 

I will concede to the feelings of detachment being true – after ten minutes of looking at my reflection, it became less and less clear that it was my face I was looking at.

Instead, it began to feel more like looking through a camera or at a video. There were times where it felt like looking at one of those paintings where the eyes follow you – especially given that there were times when I felt very definitely sure that my eyes were focused on a certain point of the mirror, but I could see that my reflection was looking at something else entirely. 

Nobody is sure of the absolute scientific reason behind this phenomenon, although there are plenty of logical and reasonable suggestions. The most likely explanation is that when faced with the same image for an extended period, the signals in our brain that decode visual input become tired, and somewhere on the route between our optic nerve and brain, some of this information gets lost. Our brains then, when met with an incomplete image, attempt to fill in the blanks. This is where we get the sort of strange effects as reported by the participants of Caputo’s study – because, when faced with an incomplete image of your face why wouldn’t your brain naturally assume you looked like a manticore or something else equally as exciting?

For further reading I would recommend taking a look at the original study as published by Caputo, or by performing a search for this and other similar studies conducted via Google Scholar.

Given the simplicity of the experiment and the fact that you don’t need any special equipment, I would certainly recommend trying this to see what sort of effects you encounter. I would be interested to read about the experiences of anyone else who tries this and how they felt about it afterward. If nothing else it’s worth it just to see if you turn into a dragon or some other mythical beast.

Until next time – take care of yourselves, your minds, and your bodies.