Every autumn at Harvard University in the USA there is a ceremony to give out the Ig Nobels. The Ig Nobel prizes honour scientific achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think. The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honour the imaginative — and spur people’s interest in science, medicine and technology.
The 2012 Ig Nobel prize for psychology was won by Anita Eerland, Tulio Guadalupe and Rolf Zwaan for their study ‘Leaning to the left makes the Eiffel Tower seem smaller’. They investigated whether body posture influences people’s estimation of quantities, in this case the height of the Eiffel Tower. They hypothesised that making people lean to the right or to the left without them being aware of it would affect their quantitative estimates. The researchers used a Wii balance board to manipulate participants’ sense of being upright so that they answered some questions when leaning slightly to the left and some when leaning slightly to the right. The participants were not aware of the manipulation of their standing position. Their estimates of the height of the Eiffel Tower were significantly smaller when participants leaned to the left than when they leaned to the right. There is no record for their judgements of the Tower of Pisa.
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