{"id":366,"date":"2010-11-18T18:46:00","date_gmt":"2010-11-18T18:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/simonings.com\/?p=366"},"modified":"2011-03-27T12:28:50","modified_gmt":"2011-03-27T12:28:50","slug":"william-hudsons-elephant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/?p=366","title":{"rendered":"William Hudson&#8217;s elephant"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><div class='p_embed p_image_embed'>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/elephants.jpg.scaled1000.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Elephants\" height=\"418\" src=\"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/elephants.jpg.scaled1000.jpg\" width=\"500\" \/><\/a>\n<\/div>\n<\/p>\n<p>In 1962, the anthropologist William Hudson offered a group of adults  and children living in the Zambian bush two drawings of an  elephant. In one, the elephant was seen from above; in the other,  the same elephant was squashed, as if by a steam-roller, so that its  legs and trunk were splayed out to the sides of the body. The children  preferred the &lsquo;squashed&rsquo; drawing, because it contained more of the  elephant.<\/p>\n<p>When Westerners are shown the same drawings, they prefer  the unsquashed one. Although there is less elephant in it, they consider  the picture more realistic, since it captures what it would be like to  see an elephant from a particular angle.<\/p>\n<p>The choice, in both  instances, is a sophisticated one. It is an aesthetic choice. The  pictorial art of the veldt typically conveys ideas of value and meaning.  The art of the post-Renaissance West typically simulates the rules of  optics. People prefer some representations over others. Representations  are plastic. They are modified over time. They change.<\/p>\n<p>Read more in Deregowski, J.B. (1972) &#8216;Pictorial perception and culture.&#8217; Scientific American 227, pp82-88.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 1962, the anthropologist William Hudson offered a group of adults and children living in the Zambian bush two drawings of an elephant. In one, the elephant was seen from above; in the other, the same elephant was squashed, as &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/?p=366\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[8,25,29,72,77,107],"class_list":["post-366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-art","tag-deregowski","tag-elephant","tag-perception","tag-psychology","tag-william-hudson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=366"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":559,"href":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366\/revisions\/559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.simonings.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}