Müller-Lyer Illusion Symbol Analysis

The Müller-Lyer illusion symbolizes people’s inability to change how they process information, even when they know they are wrong. The Müller-Lyer illusion is an image: on the top is a horizontal line with arrows or fins attached to it that point outward, away from the line. On the bottom is another horizontal line with arrows or fins that point inward, towards the line. Measuring would reveal that the two horizontal lines are the same, but the horizontal line in the bottom figure always appears longer. Even though we learn that the two lines are equally long, that is not our automatic intuition about them.

This illusion then becomes a good stand-in for what Kahneman calls “cognitive illusions.” Like the Müller-Lyer illusion, there are cognitive illusions in which, even though people learn what the real answer to a puzzle might be, their intuition will still tell them that a different answer is the correct one. Kahneman’s purpose in writing the book, then, is to help people learn the illusions—like Müller-Lyer—in which they might make a mistake, and to remind them to expend a little more effort in calculating their answers and making decisions.