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HomeEditor's PickAt last we know: The Mona Lisa IS happy!

At last we know: The Mona Lisa IS happy!

MonaLisaIn perhaps the world's most recognised painting, Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, her supposedly ambiguous expression – is she happy or sad? – was long thought to be the main reason for its appeal. Now a German study has found that nearly 100% of test subjects perceive her as happy.

Scientists at the Medical Centre – University of Freiburg, the Institute of Psychology of the University of Freiburg and the Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health (IGPP) in Freiburg have now published a study demonstrating that test subjects almost always perceive Mona Lisa as happy. They also determined that the emotional assessment of the image depends on which other versions of it are shown.

The researchers presented the test participants with the original painting and eight image versions in which the corners of Mona Lisa's mouth are slightly raised or lowered to create a sadder or happier facial expression.

"We were very surprised to find out that the original Mona Lisa is almost always seen as being happy. That calls the common opinion among art historians into question," says Dr Jürgen Kornmeier, a scientist at the IGPP and at the Eye Centre of the Medical Centre – University of Freiburg.

The team of scientists led by Kornmeier and his colleague Professor Ludger Tebartz van Elst, chief senior physician at the department of psychiatry and psychotherapy of the Medical Centre – University of Freiburg, began by creating eight versions of the Mona Lisa that differed only in gradual changes to the curvature of her mouth. The researchers then presented the original, four versions with a sadder face, and four with a happier face in random order. Their participants indicated for each version whether they perceived it as happy or sad by pressing a button and then rated how certain they were of their response. The responses were added up to form a percentage on a scale from sad to happy and a rating for the certainty of the responses.

The original and all of the more positive versions were perceived as happy in nearly 100% of the cases. The participants identified happy faces more quickly and with a higher degree of certainty than sad faces. "It appears as if our brain is biased to positive facial expressions," says Emanuela Liaci, Kornmeiers PhD student and first author of the publication.

In a second experiment, the researchers kept the image with the least mouth curvature as the saddest version, took the original Mona Lisa as the happiest version, and chose seven intermediate versions, three of them from the first experiment. The researchers were astonished to find that the participants tended to perceive the various versions of the image as sadder when the range of images they had been shown had overall sadder facial expressions. "The data show that our perception, for instance of whether something is sad or happy, is not absolute but adapts to the environment with astonishing speed," says Kornmeier.

The study is part of a larger project on perceptual processes Kornmeier and Tebartz van Elst are conducting at the Medical Centre – University of Freiburg. "Our senses have only access to a limited part of the information from our environment, for instance because an object is partially hidden or poorly illuminated," explains Kornmeier. "The brain then needs to use this restricted and often ambiguous sensory information to construct an image of the world that comes as close to reality as possible." The Freiburg researchers are studying how healthy people perform this perceptual construction and whether this is different in people with autism and psychotic disorder.

Abstract
The worldwide fascination of da Vinci’s Mona Lisa has been dedicated to the emotional ambiguity of her face expression. In the present study we manipulated Mona Lisa’s mouth curvature as one potential source of ambiguity and studied how a range of happier and sadder face variants influences perception. In two experimental conditions we presented different stimulus ranges with different step sizes between stimuli along the happy-sad axis of emotional face expressions. Stimuli were presented in random order and participants indicated the perceived emotional face expression (first task) and the confidence of their response (second task). The probability of responding ‘happy’ to the original Mona Lisa was close to 100%. Furthermore, in both conditions the perceived happiness of Mona Lisa variants described sigmoidal functions of the mouth curvature. Participants’ confidence was weakest around the sigmoidal inflection points. Remarkably, the sigmoidal functions, as well as confidence values and reaction times, differed significantly between experimental conditions. Finally, participants responded generally faster to happy than to sad faces. Overall, the original Mona Lisa seems to be less ambiguous than expected. However, perception of and reaction to the emotional face content is relative and strongly depends on the used stimulus range.

Authors
Emanuela Liaci, Andreas Fischer, Markus Heinrichs, Ludger Tebartz van Elst, Jürgen Kornmeier

[link url="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/03/170313105901.htm"]University of Freiburg material[/link]
[link url="http://www.nature.com/articles/srep43511"]Scientific Reports abstract[/link]

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