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Question 1:  Does this look like an Optical Illusion?

Question 2: Is Square A darker than Square B?

Question 3: Do you believe what I have just showed you?

Question 4: Are you compelled to try it for yourself to see if it’s true?

Question 5: What do you think causes us to think Square A is darker than Square B? our brain, our eyes, the shadow in the picture, or all of the above 

By asking the survey participants if they thought this was an optical illusion, it gave me a sense of whether or not people were expecting to be tricked.  Of the 5 People that did not believe this optical illusion after I showed them the reality, they had also thought it was not an optical illusion to begin with.  This leads me to wonder how some people can completely dismiss what their eyes are obviously seeing.  If they were not expecting to be tricked in the first place, I was expecting them to be more open to whatever “picture” I presented to them.  Two participants were even unwilling to “try it out” for themselves even after they thought my claim was not believable. If I have the notion that I am being tricked, I will attempt to look at a problem from all angles before coming up with a solution.  And usually if I don’t believe something I try it out for myself (hence the optical illusion I chose since I did not believe it when Paul showed us in class).  By asking question 5 I was attempting to gauge if people knew what was doing the “tricking” when it comes to optical illusion.  I found that only 2 out of 15 people know that your brain is the one “tricks” you into interpreting differently than your eyes are seeing.