‘Illusion’ photos of Adele, Kanye West and Barack Obama have a terrible secret – can you spot it?

A weird visual trick featuring photos of Adele, Kanye West and Barack Obama is confusing people.

The trio can be seen with their faces upside down – but things get a little weird once you flip your phone.

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Her eyes, mouth and nose are amusingly distorted.

The psychologist Dr. Julie Smith, who has appeared on shows including This Morning and Lorraine, revealed the strange test on TikTok.

“Look at these photos — you’re about to experience what’s called the Thatcher Effect,” she said explained.

“Notice anything strange?

“Now turn your phone upside down, check again.”

People in the comments were blown away by the apparent illusion.

“I almost dropped my phone,” said one user.

“omg what the heck???” said another.

like dr Julie explains, this is due to a phenomenon known as the Thatcher Effect – also known as the Thatcher Illusion.

What is the Thatcher Effect?

The term was coined in the 1980s when a scientist first demonstrated it using a photograph of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

“It’s a phenomenon where it becomes harder to see changes in facial features when the face is turned upside down,” says Dr. Julie continued.

“The Thatcher Effect tells us something about how facial perception works.

“Around the world there are billions of faces that are very similar but have subtle differences that make them unique.

“Now it is believed that our brains are fine-tuned to distinguish between all these subtle features and differences, but these processes rely on the structural configuration and the relationship between the position of different features.

“We’re so adept at mapping those individual features onto an upright face, but if that face is upside down we probably don’t have the same mental mapping available and so we focus on the individual features, but on the Thatcher -Effect, in the upside down face, the individual features look good.”

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