Thatcher effect

Abstract: Face perception is impaired for inverted images, and a prominent example of this is the Thatcher illusion: "Thatcherized" (i.e., rotated) eyes and mouths make a face look grotesque, but only if the whole face is seen upright rather than inverted. Inversion effects are often interpreted as evidence for configural face processing. However, recent findings have led to the alternative proposal that the Thatcher illusion rests on orientation sensitivity for isolated facial regions. Here, we tested whether the Thatcher effect depends not only on the orientation of facial regions but also on their visual-field location. Using a match-to-sample task with isolated eye and mouth regions we found a significant Feature × Location interaction. Observers were better at discriminating Thatcherized from normal eyes in the upper compared to the lower visual field, and vice versa for mouths. These results show that inversion effects can at least partly be driven by nonconfigural factors and that one of these factors is a match between facial features and their typical visual-field location. This echoes recent results showing feature-location effects in face individuation. We discuss the role of these findings for the hypothesis that spatial and feature tuning in the ventral stream are linked.

Abstract: Margaret Thatcher's dominance of British politics during the 1980s is well known. A self-proclaimed ‘conviction politician’, she was likely to seize any opportunity to shape the public's values. Surprisingly, however, her efforts seem to have been ineffective. Ivor Crewe has labelled Thatcher's attempt to modify the public's beliefs ‘the crusade that failed’. He concluded that ‘much of Thatcherism will die with Thatcher. Its permanent legacy at the level of the mass public will be very limited.’ So unexpected is this finding that it invites further investigation. Did Crewe find little evidence of Thatcher's impact simply because of the generality of his analysis? Might a more sharply focused study, one dealing with the delimited area of public policy, reach a different conclusion?Ivor Crewe, ‘Values: The Crusade that Failed’, in Dennis Kavanagh and Anthony Seldon, eds, The Thatcher Effect: A Decade of Change (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 250. See also Ivor Crewe, ‘The Thatcher Legacy’, in Anthony King et al., Britain at the Polls 1992 (Chatham, NJ: Chatham House Publishers, 1993), pp. 1–28, especially pp. 8–11.

Abstract: We demonstrate the Thatcher effect in biological-motion displays and show that it is primarily a result of the moving, and not static, cues in the display.

Abstract: Andrew Gamble, The Free Economy and the Strong State: The Politics of Thatcherism. Macmillan Education, Basingstoke, 1988, pp.263 + xii, $21.95 (paper). Stuart Hall, The Hard Road to Renewal: Thatcherism and the Crisis of the Left. Verso, London, 1988, pp.283 + vii, $29.95 (paper). Martin Harrop and Andrew Shaw, Can Labour Win? The Fabian Series, Unwin Hyman, London, 1989, pp.143 + x, $16.95 (paper). Peter Jenkins, Mrs Thatcher's Revolution: The Ending of the Socialist Era. Pan Books, London, 1988, pp.417 + xxxviii, $14.99 (paper). Bob Jessop, Kevin Bonnett, Simon Bromley and Tom Ling, Thatcherism: A Tale of Two Nations. Polity Press in association with Basil Blackwell, Cambridge, 1988, pp.219 + viii, $25.95 (paper). Dennis Kavanagh and Peter Morris, Consensus Politics from Attlee to Thatcher, Making Contemporary Britain. Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1989, pp.137 + xvii, $23.95 (paper). Dennis Kavanagh and Anthony Seldon (eds.), The Thatcher Effect. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1989, pp.355 + xvii, $23.95...