The Happy Couple

The bride and groom have the same face, but their external features lead us to believe they're two different people.

The brain perceives the head as a single unit. It's hard for us to distinguish separate facial features when we are influenced by the overall shape of the head and the surrounding context of the picture. That's why we don't notice that the faces of the bride and groom are identical.

The original version of this illusion was created 1966 by two researchers named Tomaso Poggio. Pawan Sinha. It was a picture of Bill Clinton standing in front of someone we "identify" as Al Gore (even though Gore's face is actually Clinton's). The illusion shows that even though we process faces by analyzing their features, we are influenced to a great extent by the overall shape of the head and the context of the picture. These clues can lead us to misidentify the face. The illusion is also another example of how we use previous knowledge to analyze information reaching our eyes.

Related exhibits:
The Upside-down Face
Upside-down Uri