How to choose the perfect shirt to look slimmer according to science

A recent study published in a prestigious journal One plus He has the answer to What number shirt should you choose if you want to look slimmer?. By looking at American football players whose jerseys have printed numbers and how spectators view them, researchers came to the conclusion that if you want to look thinner, you should choose a jersey with a smaller number.

According to a poll cited in the study and conducted by ESPN, when athletes choose which number to wear on their jersey, they tend to choose low numbers rather than high numbers. American football players surveyed said they do it because Small numbers make it appear faster, smaller and more agile. Scientists set out to investigate whether the mathematicians were right or not.

The researchers built on the ESPN survey and examined the possibility that perception of numbers has an impact on how visual stimuli associated with them are perceived. They specifically investigated the effect of shirt numbers on the perception of athletes’ dimensions (thinness). “We examined whether an athlete’s size is perceived differently depending on whether he wears a high or low jersey number,” say the scientists.

Humans We perceive the world taking into account our prior knowledge, it is something that affects everyone’s point of view. In our daily life, numbers written on objects usually represent their size, such as numbers printed on a bag of sugar or rice, or on gym weights. “The higher the number, the larger or more massive the represented object is overall. These statistical regularities can be stored in the brain and shape future cognition,” the researchers point out in their publication.

In their study, the researchers conducted two experiments. First, they showed participants computer-generated images of American football players. The players appeared in the same position, but their body size was different, as was the color of their skin and the colors of their shirts. After seeing each athlete twice, once wearing a shirt with a low number and once with a high number, the researchers asked participants to say who they thought was thinner and who looked fatter. What happened is that the participants, at the general level Athletes who wore jerseys with numbers ranging from 10 to 19 were viewed as thinner Compared to those who wore 80-89 shirts. This was the case regardless of the player’s body size, skin tone and shirt color.

“The numbers 11 and 88 differ not only in numerical size (a cognitive attribute) but also in visual size (a perceptual attribute). One might imagine that wider numbers, such as 88, would extend in width closer to the circumference of the object than narrower numbers,” say the researchers. , such as 11, and this may have an impact on the athlete’s perceived size. In order to separate the cognitive and perceptual effects, the scientists conducted a second experiment.

In the second experiment, the researchers chose a smaller set of number pairs. The low and high numbers within each pair were the same but rearranged. Thus, they had the same cognitive size and differed only in cognitive size. For example, 18 and 81. The result of this experiment was consistent with the previous experiment, that is, participants also viewed players wearing jerseys with lower numbers as thinner. but, The effect was somewhat smaller than in the first experiment.

The researchers believe that the results are what they are because of those statistical correlations between numbers and sizes that we have learned in life. These associations will affect how we perceive body size.

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