You’ve probably seen it. It’s that grainy, black-and-white sketch where one second you’re looking at a chic young woman wearing a fancy hat, and the next, you’re staring at the profile of a hunched, elderly woman with a prominent nose. This is the young old woman illusion, formally known as "My Wife and My Mother-in-Law." It’s basically the granddaddy of all optical illusions. Honestly, it’s been around for over a century, yet we’re still finding out weird new things about why our brains can’t see both ladies at the exact same time.
It's a trip.
One moment, the "young" woman’s necklace is the "old" woman’s mouth. The young woman’s ear? Yeah, that’s the old woman’s eye. It’s a classic example of a bistable percept—a fancy way of saying your brain is stuck between two equally valid interpretations of the same data and has to pick a side.
Where did the young old woman illusion actually come from?
Most people think it started with a British cartoonist named William Ely Hill. He published it in Puck magazine back in 1915 with the caption: "My Wife and My Mother-in-Law. They are both in this picture — find them." But history is rarely that simple.
Actually, the image is way older than 1915. It first appeared on a German postcard in 1888. It was used as an advertisement for the Anchor Greeting Card Company. Then, a few decades later, Hill adapted it, and it went viral—well, the 1915 version of viral.
Psychologists eventually got their hands on it. Boring? Maybe. But it changed how we understand vision. Edwin Boring (yes, that was his real name) wrote a paper about it in 1930, which is why you’ll sometimes hear it called the "Boring Figure." He used it to demonstrate how our expectations and "top-down processing" dictate what we perceive. If you’re expecting to see a young woman, your brain will literally ignore the visual cues that form the older woman until someone points them out.
Why you see one version first (and it’s not random)
Ever wonder why your friend saw the old lady immediately while you only saw the girl in the fur coat? It turns out, your age might be the culprit. A fascinating study published in the journal Scientific Reports in 2018 looked at this exact phenomenon.
Researchers at Flinders University in Australia surveyed 393 participants. The age range was huge—18 to 68. They showed the young old woman illusion for just a split second and asked how old the person in the drawing was.
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The results were wild.
Younger participants tended to see the young woman first. Older participants? They saw the older woman. It suggests that "own-age bias" isn't just about who we hang out with; it actually filters our subconscious visual processing. We are literally tuned to recognize people who look like us. This isn't some "you're only as old as you feel" platitude. It's biological. Your brain is a prediction machine. It uses your life experience to fill in the gaps of a messy image. If you spend your day looking at peers, your brain defaults to that template.
The mechanics of the flip
How does the flip happen? It’s all about the "eye."
Let’s get technical for a second, but keep it simple. The image relies on ambiguous contours. In the young old woman illusion, the line that defines the young woman’s jawline is the exact same line that defines the bridge of the old woman’s nose.
When your brain decides that line is a "jaw," it assigns the surrounding features accordingly. The "ear" becomes an ear. But the moment your brain re-categorizes that line as a "nose," the ear has to become an eye because ears don't live in the middle of a face. Your neurons are essentially competing for dominance. This is called neural inhibition. Once one "image" wins, it suppresses the other.
You can’t see both at once. Go ahead, try. You'll find that your brain toggles back and forth. It’s a binary switch.
Can you force the change?
Sorta. If you’re stuck seeing the young woman, try focusing on the very center of the image. Look at the "necklace." Tell yourself, "This is a mouth." If you focus on the "ear," tell yourself, "This is an eye."
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By consciously labeling the parts, you’re sending a message from your prefrontal cortex down to your visual cortex. You’re basically hacking your own perception.
What this illusion tells us about reality
The young old woman illusion isn't just a party trick. It’s a reminder that "seeing is believing" is a lie.
What we "see" is actually a hallucination constructed by our brains based on past experiences, social biases, and current context. If you can’t trust a simple line drawing, why do we trust our first impressions of people in real life?
Psychologists use this to study "perceptual set." This is the tendency to perceive things in a certain way based on expectations. For example, if I showed you ten pictures of different young women and then showed you this illusion, you would almost certainly see the young woman. You’ve been primed.
It’s more than just a picture
Beyond the science, there's a certain cultural weight to the image. It represents the duality of life—the transition from youth to old age. It’s a bit poetic, really. The two women are literally part of the same structure. One cannot exist in the drawing without the other.
There are other versions of this, too. You’ve probably seen the "Vase or Two Faces" (Rubin’s Vase) or the "Duck-Rabbit." They all play on the same glitch in our software. Our brains hate ambiguity. We want things to be one thing or the other. We crave categories.
The young old woman illusion forces us to sit with the discomfort of ambiguity. It shows us that two people can look at the exact same set of facts—the exact same lines on a page—and come to two completely different, yet equally "correct" conclusions.
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Testing your own perception
If you want to play around with this, try these steps to see how flexible your brain actually is today:
1. The "Social" Test
Show the image to the oldest and youngest people you know. Don’t tell them what it is. Just ask, "How old is this person?" See if the Australian study holds up in your own life. It’s a fun way to see own-age bias in action.
2. The Inversion Trick
Turn the image upside down. It usually breaks the illusion because our brains are specifically "hard-wired" to recognize faces right-side up. When it's upside down, you start seeing the lines for what they actually are—just lines—rather than a person.
3. The Focus Shift
Cover the left half of the image. Then cover the right. By limiting the data your brain receives, you can often force it to "reset" its interpretation.
4. Check Your Mood
Believe it or not, some research suggests that our emotional state can influence our focus. High-stress levels tend to narrow our focus, making it harder to "flip" the image. If you’re relaxed, you might find the transition between the young and old woman happens much faster.
Actionable insights for a better brain
Understanding how the young old woman illusion works isn't just trivia. You can actually use this knowledge to be a bit more objective in your daily life.
- Acknowledge your bias: Just like your brain defaults to a certain age in the drawing, it defaults to certain assumptions about people in real life. When you meet someone, ask yourself: "Am I seeing the whole picture, or just what I’m primed to see?"
- Practice perspective-shifting: If you’re in an argument, try to remember the illusion. The other person might be looking at the exact same "lines" as you but seeing an entirely different "lady."
- Challenge your first look: Whenever you feel certain about a snap judgment, take a second look. Zoom out. Focus on a different "feature" of the situation. You might be surprised at what pops out when you stop looking for what you expect to find.
The young old woman illusion has survived for over 130 years because it hits on a fundamental truth: the world isn't always what it seems, and our brains are constantly making guesses. Most of the time, those guesses are right. But sometimes, it’s worth stopping to look for the "other woman" in the room.