Replicating Caputo's strange-face illusion after reading the Scientific American article Locking Eyes with a Monster:
Throughout their close encounter, each member of the duo experienced their partner’s face as everchanging. Human features became animal traits, transmogrifying into grotesqueries. There were eyeless faces, and faces with too many eyes. The semblances of dead relatives materialized. Monstrosities abounded.
Please contact me if you are willing to try this and write a short report. I am happy to give credit (or keep you anonymous) as preferred. You can find the procedure here.
Caputo's original article is Strange-face-in-the-mirror illusion.
Caputo's method was simple. Use a lamp with dim lighting, stick the subject in front of a mirror, and have them look at themselves for 10 minutes.
These observations were made in a quiet room dimly lit by a 25 W incandescent light. The lamp was placed on the floor behind the observer so that it was not visible either directly or in the mirror. A relatively large mirror (0.5 m × 0.5 m) was placed about 0.4 m in front of the observer. Luminance of the reflected face image within the mirror was about 0.2 cd m-2 and this level allowed detailed perception of fine face traits but attenuated colour perception. The illusion occurred even at higher levels of illumination of observer's face (0.2 to 1.6 cd m-2) The task of the observer was to gaze at his/her reflected face within the mirror.
The onset of strange-face illusion was quite fast:
Usually, after less than a minute, the observer began to perceive the strange-face illusion.
And with perplexing results:
The descriptions differed greatly across individuals and included: (a) huge deformations of one's own face (reported by 66% of the fifty participants); (b) a parent's face with traits changed (18%), of whom 8% were still alive and 10% were deceased; (c) an unknown person (28%); (d) an archetypal face, such as that of an old woman, a child, or a portrait of an ancestor (28%); (e) an animal face such as that of a cat, pig, or lion (18%); (f) fantastical and monstrous beings (48%).
Strange-face illusions during inter-subjective gazing was then published in 2012, this time examining the strange-face illusion between partners:
The purpose of the present study is to investigate whether strange-face illusions were perceived when two individuals, in a dimly lit room, gazed at each other in the face. In preliminary trials, I found that each participant of the experimental pair described spontaneously illusions of deformed faces and strange-faces of the other participant, even if they had not been told in the initial instructions that this may happen.
The setup was almost identical:
The experiment was conducted in a 4 m x 4 m white room, quiet and obscured from external light. Two chairs were positioned around the center of the room, facing each other. The two participants were seated so as to maintain a distance of 1.0 m between faces. The space left empty between the chairs was 0.4 m wide and it was covered with a flat opaque panel. A halogen lamp (Osram 12V, 10W) produced a fixed beam illumination. The spotlight was mounted under the flat panel, at the very center, halfway between the two chairs. The spotlight beam pointed toward the floor in such a way to produce only indirect, diffuse and relatively uniform lighting within the room. Illumination of faces was approx. 0.2 cd m-2 measured by a digital photometer with a wide-angle sensor (Pantec by Carlo Gavazzi, LM-20). This level of illumination allowed detailed perception of fine face traits but attenuated color perception.
It was found that every participant experienced SFI:
Results showed that all participants perceived strange-face illusions whilst inter-subjective gazing. Hereunder, all data are expressed as means ± SEM. Event-related-responses showed mean onset of first illusion 30.7 ± 7.9 s, mean frequency 2.4 ± .4 illusions per min, mean duration 4.5 ± 0.6 s.
(For interested readers, Caputo goes into much deeper analysis.)
So as not to prime the participants into describing anything like in Caputo's original study, I instructed them as follows:
Stare at your face in a mirror continuously for 10:00 minutes in dim lighting conditions that still allow for the distinguishing of facial features. Move and blink as little as possible. Eliminate visual and audible distractions before starting.
I mentioned nothing about SFI or what they might expect to see. For their report, I asked them to write a short paragraph about what they experienced at roughly what times (beginning, middle, end). If the participant had heard of SFI, I merely noted it down, as prior knowledge doesn't seem to have any effect on whether the SFI occurs.
I stood in front of my bathroom mirror with the bedroom door cracked and my red light lamp on.
The effects became apparent after 0:30 min and lasted for an estimated 5:00 min. A variety of things happened: face shrunk; face expanded; eyes widened; face got noticeably older; it felt like I was looking at a different person. I experienced all of Caputo 2010's results: "huge deformations of one's own face" (shrinking, expanding); "a parent's face with traits changed" (my father, deceased); "an unknown person"; "an archetypal face, such as that of an old woman, a child, or a portrait of an ancestor" (old man); "an animal face such as that of a cat, pig, or lion" (I cannot identify the animal, but it was animal-like); "fantastical and monstrous beings" (the aforementioned animal looked monstrous, too).
Blinking reset the strangeness, but it was quick to return. I focused on different spots on my face, namely the bridge, both eyes, and nose. The bridge provided the most intense effects, the eyes less so, and the nose virtually nothing (although this was after the 5:00 min mark). I started off grinning due to the silliness of this task, but this did not seem to affect the illusion. Tunnel vision of sorts occurred: at a few instances I couldn't see any of the room and my face was becoming hazy. I'm not sure if this is due to tears building up in my eyes, the darkness (of which a similar thing has happened to me in a similar environment), or something else.
Gwern has posted about this in r/slatestarcodex, commenting on his experience:
When I tried it now, I didn't get much of an effect. After 10 minutes of very rigidly staring into a mirror at an eye or between my eyebrows as a target (blinking or saccading at all seems to reset it), the most I get is the usual visual illusion effect of saturation leading to fade out and then a flesh-colored blur obscuring my face. I guess the people who see monsters go beyond a blur and are able to fill it in with something more interesting?
Full report here:
I can pretty much report a null result: the ten minutes felt just like me looking at my own face.
I was somewhat tired (despite (or maybe because?) sleeping more than 9 hours the night before), and often lost focus on my face. I more often than not focused on certain features of my face, such as only the mouth, nose, or one of the eyes. Some of the time (more than usually) I was thinking about the attractiveness of my face (or the lack thereof).
At one point, while I was trying to focus on the whole of my face, for a brief moment it looked detached from the rest of my head (like a mask with my face being held infront of my head), and somewhat nearer to the mirror than the rest of my head, but that illusion quickly disappeared when I became more attentive.
The main thing I observed when staring at my face was that when my vision started to go blurry/my face became distorted, my eyes would refocus/go back to normal. When focusing on the tip of my nose I saw a pig face. My face, at times, would blend into the background, no definite border/outline. When this happened, my eyes would bring me back to normal. Staring at the bridge of my nose caused the most distortion of my face.
I am transgender for reference and I already have a really love/hate relationship with mirrors. I wanted to see what would happen
Beginning: My mind talk was chattering about how I looked. Looked at my chin, nose, eyes, brow bone, etc. made gender comments about them. I picked a spot between my eyes and tried not to blink. My mind talk started to freak out, It talked about my breathing and for a bit my breathing got faster and I felt anxious. I kept staring at the same spot and calmed myself. With no new visual stimulation my mind talk became more introspective and commented on myself - I am alive, Yes that is me, That is what I look like etc.
Middle: Things started to look grey and outlined. Like you used the "find edges" filter in photoshop
My mind talk started to wonder how much time had passed. I tried to bring my focuss back to what I was seeing and I noted that my face looked a bit like both of my parents at times and sometimes like a demon or disfigured person at other times.
I felt less anxiety at this point and I started to accept that I was ok in this state.
End: The "find edges" effect became more intense and every edge and shadow on my face became hyper visible. My mind talk kinda hated how I looked for alot of this.
I blinked as little as possible and stayed on the same spot. I had trouble keeping my eyes focused because the image would turn dark and grey so I was unable to see for a few seconds at a time. During these times I would loose focus of my eyes a little. I tried to remember to refocus my eyes when I was able to see again.
I wondered if it would be possible to quiet my mind talk in this state and I tried on a few occasions. I quieted it for a second or so max before a thought would creep back in. I need more practice meditating I guess.
I thought I looked like a demon for most of this phase as I could see every little flaw in my face with great detail.
I was calm for this part of the experience and I accepted it as it was.
They did not send me a report, but had a mostly null result. Slight face deformations, but nothing else.
They did not send me a report, but had a null result.
Caveats up front: couldn't get dim lighting. Only mirror in my apartment is in the bathroom. Only light in there is fluorescent. Not super bright, but not super dim. I had to sit uncomfortably on the back of a chair to be high enough
Observations... Not much to be honest. Sometimes my vision would get sort of blurry, or parts of it would fade into light on the edges. But I wonder if that would happen if I stared at anything for ten minutes. I feel like I have a better sense of how I look than before, for better and worse. Time went by surprisingly quickly.