Abstract
Morinaga’s paradox of displacement is constructed by setting several copies of the two Mueller-Lyer figures one above the other. The Mueller-Lyer illusion is that the wings pointing out seem farther apart than wings pointing in, and Morinaga’s paradox is that when one looks down a column of wings pointing alternately one way and the other, they appear misaligned but in the opposite direction from the Mueller-Lyer illusion. The hypothesis of this paper is that the subject, under instructions to align the vertical array of wings, sets up a vertical figure-ground organization different from that used in judging the horizontal distance between wings, and that the two illusions are contingent upon the two organizations. The experiment showed that Morinaga’s paradox occurs when only one column of wings is shown, in agreement with the figure-ground hypothesis, and also shows that Morinaga’s paradox disappears when short line segments are introduced which disrupt the vertical figure-ground organization.
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