The Sun, a lively British tabloid and definitive authority on celebrity gossip and boobs, in other words a-fun-to-read Orwellian rag, featured a cat on a staircase with the headline: Optical illusion of a cat could reveal whether you are an optimist or a pessimist depending on what you see first.
The apparent illusion invites you to decide whether the cat is going up or down the stairs.
The Sun columnist Jacob Bentley-York writes of the image (“shared” with him by the Mind Journal):
“Whichever way you see the cat walking exposes your approach to life, it claims. Both viewpoints are said to have definitive meanings.”
Happily for Bentley-York, he does attribute the claim to the the Mind Journal and not to himself.
Then follows a summary of the analysis according to the Mind Journal, of the two ways people might see the image.
Going Up
If the cat looks as if it’s going up the stairs, you’re likely an optimist, according to the Mind Journal. There are soaring claims of positivity in such a view, such as rising higher in life, seeing potential and growth wherever one looks, and “clear signs of ambition in you and no one, except yourself, can stop you from going higher in life.”
Going Down
If on the other hand you are addled with a mind that sees the cat going down the stairs, the picture is not so rosy.
“You are a skeptic, to be honest,” the Mind Journal states, (apparently implying this is a bad thing).
“It may have been based on your experiences in life or just because of the sort of people you may have met that tilted your view of life towards the negative side. But this means that you don’t trust easily now, you calculate before you commit and you are wary of people who seem too sweet. It may just be your way of tackling the world but you are much sharper and shrewd in your dealings, making it almost impossible to trick or deceive you.”
So overall, if you saw the cat going down the stairs you are a negative, suspicious and untrusting person, with the possible advantage that it is very hard to sell you something you don’t need.
Clearly, the Mind Journal analysis chimes with the widespread idea that being an optimist is a good thing, and that being a pessimist is a handicap and not much fun. It ignores completely the third possibility, which is to be a realist, be it a miserable or cheerful one, examining all interpretations that result from vague first impressions, allowing reason to determine precisely what is going on.
So What’s Going On?
The problem with the sort of folk psychology displayed in this particular instance is not its definition of optimist and pessimist, but the fact that it does not apply to the so-called illusion of the cat on the stairs.
As the entry in the Mind Journal itself points out (after you are shown the image and asked to decide), the cat is clearly walking down the stairs.
“You may notice a slight shadow under the overhanging nose of the stair treads. These shadows would only be visible if the cat was going down the stairs towards the viewer who is looking upstairs.”
And that indeed is the case. Stone or marble stairs (as the image appears to show) are constructed using a top horizontal slab resting on a vertical slab, to form the box shape of each step. Sometimes there is no overhang of the top slab, and so no protuberance or ridge as seen in the photo. But whether there is or not, for obvious reasons of stability the top slab will always be laid so as to rest on the vertical slab, and not such that it will sink behind it.
Frequently, the top, horizontal slab does indeed overhang the vertical. This is possibly for aesthetic reasons, though likely there is a construction or durability advantage to the overhang itself.
In the image with the cat the top edge of each step protrudes markedly, seen especially clearly in the step at the very bottom of the image. But it is not only the shadow formed by the ridge that highlights the fact that the stairs is being viewed from the bottom (and thus the cat is descending), because light could just as well be coming from below as above, resulting in no shadow. It is the fact that our brains have learned that stone stairways always have the top slab resting on the lower vertical slab, and so no ridge forms as viewed from the top. And as noted, frequently the top slab does indeed overhang the lower vertical slab, as viewed from the bottom of the stairway.
One may see very rare exceptions to this, where the top slab does not rest on the vertical slab, and so will in time sink under its own weight and the impact of footfall. A ridge would then form protruding upwards. This presents a serious hazard of catching your heels on the ridge and falling headlong as you descend, so thankfully we almost never come across stair ways like this.
There is a second feature of the image that further demonstrates the cat is descending the stairs. If the cat were going up, then not only will the stair case have been constructed by a fool, there would also be dirt and debris packed up against the ridge. None, however, is visible (unless it was cleaned just before taking the photo).
This so-called optical illusion, then, shows us absolutely nothing about being an optimist or pessimist. If anything, all it shows is that people who view it as a cat ascending are failing to see the world as it is. Which arguably could severely disadvantage them and perhaps be fatal in some circumstances. One could be harsh, and rather than labelling them cheery optimists with a bright future ahead, they are happy-go-lucky panglossians, easily duped and ready to settle for the first impression or explanation that comes along. Beware!
Correctly viewing the image as a cat descending, on the other hand, deserves a pat on the head, and perhaps a tin of tuna, because your brain correctly interpreted the world. The worst that can be said about you is that you are indeed a realist.
If there is anything else to say in all this nonsense about uncovering optimist or pessimist tendencies in our interpretations, it is that it’s another form of creating illusory differences and divisions that do not help us get along. The Sun page hosts a survey, with roughly 68.2% claiming they viewed the cat as ascending, 29.3% descending, and 2.5% unsure. The problem with the survey is that it comes after the analysis of the two views of ascent or descent are explained, thus biasing the reader towards the cheerier outlook. How many people adjusted their answer when voting so that they would avoid admitting, to themselves and not simply to The Sun, they are pessimists when in fact they are realists?
Though I think that even “realist” may be a problematic label in itself. Punto, labels are problematic.
To cast some serious light on this, in conclusion it is helpful to call on a higher authority. If asked to decide on the matter, Erwin Schrödinger would surely have answered that until you looked at it, the cat was “going both up and down the stairs.”