A Constant In A Changing World: Hand Size Keeps Us Grounded
Monday, September 29, 2014 - 12:10
in Psychology & Sociology
We know our bodies don't just change in size, which makes it an effective metric in a world in motion. Psychologists have found that people tend to perceive their dominant hand as staying relatively the same size even when it's magnified, lending support to the idea that we use our hand as a constant perceptual "ruler" to measure the world around us. To size up the world around us, we need to be able to translate the information that comes in through our eyes into units that are relevant to our everyday lives. The body is a particularly effective metric because it allows us to relate information about object size to actions that we're able to perform on or with the object. read more