Ig Nobel Prize Winner Higashiyama Atsuki and the “Between-Legs Impact” Thriller
The Ig Nobel Prizes are sometimes handled as a joke, however their recipients are sometimes engaged on surprisingly illuminating scientific fields. Japanese researcher Higashiyama Atsuki, who received his Ig Nobel in 2016 for his work on the impact of viewing objects between one’s personal legs, continues to discover areas that make clear the connections between the physique and the mind.
The “Between-Legs Impact” Wins Ig Nobel Prize
In 2016 Higashiyama Atsuki acquired an English-language letter within the mail informing him that his examine on the impact of viewing issues the other way up between one’s legs (the so-called “between-legs impact”), which had initially been printed 10 years earlier, had been chosen as a candidate for the Ig Nobel Prize.
He ignored it, pondering it should have been a prank of some form. Then he acquired one other letter, this time in Japanese. The contents of the letter requested him to point if he would settle for the prize if it have been awarded to him. “Think about that,” he remembers pondering. “It was true!”
The Ig Nobel Prize awards ceremony was held within the Sanders Theatre at Harvard College between acts of an opera. The prize he was awarded was a big clock that was outfitted with a hand that indicated the sixty-first second — the “leap second”—and minute and hour arms that puzzlingly indicated seconds. The prize cash was $10 trillion, though the unit of foreign money was not US {dollars} however slightly Zimbabwe {dollars}, which had been discontinued on the time he acquired the prize. In truth, the prize cash was price about ¥170.
“It was an especially humorous awards ceremony,” remarks Higashiyama, “which was becoming to the event.”
The Ig Nobel Prize clock with a leap-second hand. (© Energy Information)
The ten trillion Zimbabwe greenback word that Higashiyama acquired as prize cash. (© Energy Information)
Higashiyama started his “between-legs impact” analysis in 1996. Since he was youthful he sensed that there have been quite a few constraints on this planet of psychological analysis in Japan, and consequently he deliberately submitted his work to English-language publications to extend his probabilities of publication. “Though my work was fairly boring,” he feedback, “if I printed it in English there have been individuals who would learn it. This greater than the rest made me glad.”
What precisely was this analysis that he modestly describes as “boring”?
Optical Phantasm Disappears When Positioned Sideways
“Viewing issues between one’s legs,” Higashiyama explains, “entails bending on the waist and taking a look at one’s environment the other way up from between the legs. When one does this, distances and colours seem in a different way.”
At Higashiyama’s urging, I bend ahead and check out a forest by my legs. Seen on this method, the whole scene appears farther away, the trunks, branches, and leaves of the timber appear to be smaller, and the distances between all the assorted objects in sight appear to shrink in measurement as nicely. It additionally appears that the shapes and colours are clearer than when seen within the regular method.
Once I specific shock on the wonders of the human sense of sight, Higashiyama counters: “It isn’t sight per se, however slightly the affect of the physique.”
“In our analysis,” he continues, “we discuss with issues we are able to see as ‘visible info,’ whereas we discuss with phenomena that happen on account of altering the place of the physique as ‘bodily info.’ The ‘between-legs impact’ is strongly affected by this bodily info. That is what I’ve discovered by a means of accumulating information and repeated experimentation.”
Higashiyama demonstrating between-the-legs viewing. (© Energy Information)
Whereas nonetheless in his early thirties, Higashiyama started learning the “horizontal-vertical phantasm” in an try and determine the connection between bodily and visible info. The horizontal-vertical phantasm is a phenomenon during which the vertical line seems longer when a horizontal line and a vertical line of the identical size are drawn. For instance, it has been proven that when a constructing that’s in actual fact 10 meters each alongside its frontage and in top is seen, it appears to the viewer that the peak is 1.4 occasions the width, making the constructing look 14 meters tall.
This has been included in textbooks and has led to the widespread perception that visible info causes optical illusions. However Higashiyama thought that they might be attributable to bodily info as nicely, so he had a number of college students view a constructing and requested them the way it appeared to them.
The vertical and horizontal bars are of the identical size, however the horizontal-vertical phantasm makes the vertical bar look 1.4 occasions longer.
The outcomes he obtained got here as a shock.
“Once they seen the constructing from a traditional standing place, its look to them was precisely as defined in textbooks,” Higashiyama defined. “That’s, the vertical measurement appeared longer than it’s in actuality. However after I had them view it whereas mendacity on their facet, a few of them reported that the vertical and the horizontal lengths appeared the identical. In different phrases, we found that when mendacity on one’s facet, the horizontal-vertical vertical phantasm doesn’t happen.”
No textbook consists of point out of 1’s visible notion altering when one is in a special bodily place. What was surprising about his discovery was that even this small deviation from actuality would possibly name all textbooks into query.
This was how Higashiyama arrived on the conclusion that it was essential to check whether or not the horizontal-vertical phantasm was on account of visible or bodily info by supplementing his preliminary outcomes with experiments during which volunteers seen objects the other way up from between their legs.
Fantasy Arose in Nineteenth Century Textbooks
When most individuals hear “viewing between one’s legs” they in all probability consider Amanohashidate, a vacationer spot overlooking Miyazu Bay in northern Kyoto Prefecture. Historic texts state that Izanagi, the deity that created Japan, linked heaven and the earth with a ladder generally known as the ama no hashidate. Primarily based on this historic legend, folks take a look at the surroundings there the other way up from between their legs with a purpose to expertise the phantasm that the land bridge throughout the bay presents a stairway to the heavens. There are additionally areas of Japan the place the folklore says that one can see ghosts, the world of spirits and demons, or the longer term by wanting the other way up by one’s legs. This fascination with wanting by one’s legs comes from the truth that it permits folks to see the world in a method that’s completely different from regular.
Between-the-legs viewing at Amanohashidate. (???? Pixta)
The truth that this phenomenon was recognized in antiquity led to consideration from researchers up to now. Papers written with reference to between-the-legs viewing have been printed in Japan previous to World Struggle II. Even outdoors Japan, there’s a textbook on experimental psychology printed towards the top of the nineteenth century that talked about the “between-legs impact.”
However so far as Higashiyama was involved, these older works lacked ample goal information and contained poor proof.
Pondering that he needed to take the time to analysis the difficulty for himself, Higashiyama had over 200 college students take part in an experiment, many from Ritsumeikan College.
The experiment consisted of the next: In step 1, he had them view a scene standing up within the regular method. In step 2, he had them view the identical scene by “prism goggles” that made the scene look the other way up. The third step had them take off the prism goggles and take a look at the scene once more, this time by their legs. Lastly, within the fourth step, the scholars appeared on the scene by their legs whereas sporting the prism goggles. A minimal of fifty college students carried out every of the 4 steps. Then, he interviewed the scholars to find how the scenes appeared to them.
The important thing to this experiment was using the prism eyeglasses. The outcomes confirmed that in step 2 the scenes appeared much like how they appeared in step 1, however that in steps 3 and 4 objects that appeared to be far-off appeared smaller than they did in step 1. In different phrases, the between-legs impact was discovered to be primarily on account of bodily info slightly than visible info.
Experimenting with 200 Pupil Volunteers
“We clearly established that the bodily issue is strongly linked to the between-legs impact,” says Higashiyama.
Talking from the angle of a psychologist specializing in spatial notion, Higashiyama additional states that “The bodily issue should not be ignored within the area of psychology. I imagine that discovering proof of this issue is of utmost significance on this planet of psychology, the place the bodily is commonly neglected.”
Psychology With out Proof
Higashiyama has misgivings about current-day psychology.
Many research place significance on overt, acutely aware actions like seeing and listening. And a few psychologists conclude that individuals are of 1 persona sort or one other based mostly on questionnaires that lack proof, and that are subsequently indistinguishable from fortune-telling.
“So, folks have biases of their understanding,” explains Higashiyama. “The identical significance as positioned on sight and listening to needs to be positioned on bodily info as nicely, and conclusions have to be based mostly on proof. Researchers want to concentrate on the truth that the sphere of psychology runs the danger of fixing folks’s lives.”
Trying again to that day in 2016, despite the truth that Higashiyama lastly realized that being chosen as a candidate for the Ig Nobel Prize was not a joke, he hesitated to simply accept the prize. What satisfied him was younger folks.
“My analysis is boring and is never praised,” says Higashiyama. “However I wished to let the following technology of researchers and college students know that somebody was paying consideration. If accepting the Ig Nobel Prize may obtain this purpose, I assumed, then so be it.”
The Ig Nobel Prize certificates offered to Higashiyama. (Courtesy of Higashiyama Atsuki)
After receiving the prize, the Alumni Affiliation at Ritsumeikan College started speaking about between-the-legs viewing, and Higashiyama immediately discovered that he had way more invites to lecture on his findings at conferences held by educational associations in fields like drugs and economics. And he was the topic of elevated media curiosity as nicely.
“I used to be glad that I had so many alternatives to debate the small print of the analysis I’d been conducting for therefore lengthy,” he says.
What Higashiyama at all times retains in thoughts whereas conducting his analysis is figuring out proof, in addition to avoiding changing into completely immersed in a single analysis subject by involving himself in a number of initiatives on the identical time. If he reaches an deadlock in a single examine, he can shift his consideration to one thing else, which regularly results in new concepts, he says. Though this methodology implies that it might take longer for him to finish every undertaking, he says that his sense of satisfaction far outweighs the additional burden.
At the moment, Higashiyama is engaged on a undertaking referred to as “The notion of the path of the arms and physique and the impact of adapting to that path.”
Higashiyama explains: “The topic lifts upward his ahead outstretched arms along with his eyes open. He holds that pose for a short time after which returns his arms to the horizontal place. That is easy for topics to do. Then he performs the identical actions however now along with his eyes closed. This time, his arms don’t return to the horizontal place however slightly are angled barely upward. This confirmed that imaginative and prescient cancels out bodily adaptation.”
Higashiyama’s lifelong analysis curiosity is the connection between the visible and the bodily. When requested what his biggest pleasure in his analysis is, he responds as follows.
Professor Emeritus Higashiyama Atsuki. (© Energy Information)
“I’m most glad after I discuss my analysis and the individual I’m speaking to appears enthusiastic about it. Once I received the Ig Nobel Prize, it was a pleasure to know that folks from around the globe thought my analysis into the between-legs impact was attention-grabbing.”
The time period “pleasure” is one that’s indubitably extremely important to most researchers. To this present day, Higashiyama continues to gather information and repeat experiments in an effort to really feel that “pleasure” as soon as once more.
(Initially printed in Japanese. Interview and textual content by Wakabayashi Rio and Energy Information. Images by Energy Information besides the place in any other case indicated.)