Mona Lisa smiling or not - New German study

Mona Lisa smiling or not - New German study

 

The Mona Lisa is one of world’s most famous painting and also most discussed painting by experts. An ongoing discussion might have been solved, Is Mona Lisa happy or sad?
German researchers at the Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health in Freiburg, claim to have found the answer. despite many art critics stating her expression to be a frown, Mona Lisa is indeed smiling.Can you see it?
First, the researchers showed participants the original “Mona Lisa” along with eight different expressions by slightly changing the mouth curves into happy and sad configurations.The on total nine different expressions were shown in random order to participants 30 times, with the volunteers reporting whether the face was happy or sad and their confidence in that judgement. 
The original version of the painting was placed in the happy category by the participants close to 100 percent of the time. According to SmartNews it wasn’t the only aim of the study. In a second experiment the researchers drilled down on the sad images. Using the original as the happiest expression, they presented their subjects with seven intermediate versions of the “Mona Lisa” looking glum, including three from the previous experiment. What they found is that the participants rated the images they’d previously seen as sadder than they did in the first experiment. In other words, in the presence of other sad image, the participants found all the images sadder overall. “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 German researcher.
Mona Lisa, or Lisa Gherardini, was the wife of a Florentine cloth merchant. The pair apparently lived together until Mona Lisa’s husband passed away, leaving her to take care of the children with the help of his fortune.
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