Perception of an Ambiguous Figure: Subconscious Social Group Bias or Anchor Effect?

Abstract Older participants who are briefly presented with the ‘my wife and my mother-in-law’ ambiguous figure estimate its age to be higher than young participants do. This finding is thought to be the result of a subconscious social group bias that influences participants’ perception of the figure. Because people are better able to recognize similarly aged individuals, young participants are expected to perceive the ambiguous figure as a young woman, while older participants are more likely to recognize an older lady. We replicate the difference in age estimates, but find no relationship between participants’ age and their perception of the ambiguous figure. This leads us to conclude that the positive relationship between participants’ age and their age estimates of the ambiguous ‘my wife and my mother-in-law’ figure is better explained by the own-age anchor effect, which holds that people use their own age as a yard stick to determine the age of the figure, regardless of whether the young woman or the older lady is perceived. Assimilation of others’ characteristics to one’s own is particularly likely to occur in uncertain circumstances that provide little information to base judgments on, such as estimating the age of a briefly presented ambiguous figure.