This is an amazing illusion! What do you see? 😏😏😏

This is an amazing illusion! What do you see? 😏😏😏

“My Wife and My Mother-in-Law” by British cartoonist William Ely Hill is one of the world’s most famous optical illusions. First published in 1915, it has recently caught the attention of psychologists again. A team of Australian scientists ran an experiment showing that your perception of this image depends on your age.

Not everyone can spot both “scenes” in the picture—that is, both the young woman and the older woman. The trick is that one face hides two profiles: a young woman seen in three‑quarter view (you can just make out her cheek and eyelashes) and an elderly woman seen in full profile (with a hooked nose and chin). According to the researchers, most people initially see only one of the two.

Researchers from Flinders University and the University of South Australia set out to discover what factors influence how we perceive this century‑old illusion.

In their experiment, 666 participants from 22 countries, aged 18 to 68, who had never before seen the illusion, were shown the image for just half a second and then asked to describe the gender and approximate age of the person they saw. A clear pattern emerged: participants under 30 generally reported seeing the young woman, while older observers tended to see the elderly woman first.

Moreover, the younger the participant, the younger an age they attributed to the young woman. The study showed that the observer’s age significantly influences what they see. Interestingly, some older participants still reported seeing the young woman first—researchers speculate that these individuals are “young at heart.”

Your perception of this optical illusion depends on your age.
(Chart: Vertical axis = participant’s age; horizontal axis = age they estimated for the woman.)

The original “wife and mother-in-law” image first appeared on a German postcard in 1888. In 1915, William Ely Hill created his own version, and in 1930, psychologist Edwin Boring used it as a classic example of a visual illusion.

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