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I did my survey on peoples reaction (the volleyball team) to the skull image. I wanted to see if there was a trend in what they saw. In other words I wanted to see what interpretation of the ambiguous figure the brain prefered, or if it even prefered one over the other.

I gave each player an image of the ambiguous figure and asked them four questions about it:

1. How many images do you see? and what are they?

2. What image did u see first?

3. What image did you like better?

4. Why do you think your brain chose the image you saw first?

Everyone saw two images (one person saw a woman playing chess). Everyone agreed that the first image they saw was the skull, and majority said they preferred the image of the lady in the mirror. Overall, they thought that the reason they saw the skull first was because it was the dominant image, in addition to being a white image surrounded by black.

It turns out that although the individuals preferred the softer image (more feminie-> all girls) the brain selected the other image. I interpreted this information as follows: the persons personal preference doesn't impact the choice of the brain. The brain chooses based on what is seen first; the dominant image. I wouldn't say that the brain has a preference as in it "likes" one image over the other, but it does "prefer" images more easily detectable.