Each of the four drawings in this quiz hides two or three pictures in one: lips made of trees and roots, a breaking wave that is also a fight and a skull, a tree that is also a woman, and a kissing couple who are also a mushroom cloud. The game is simple. Look at each image for a second, note what you see first, then read the playful "meaning" attached to it.
Treat the readings as conversation starters, not a diagnosis. What you notice first depends far more on where your eyes land, the size and contrast of each shape and what you were thinking about a moment ago than on your character. After the quiz you will find why double images work on the brain and what psychologists say about picture-based personality tests.
Who made these drawings
The images are by Christo Dagorov, a Switzerland-based illustrator known for meticulous, photorealistic pencil drawings in which one subject melts into another. His series of lips, where the texture of the mouth turns into forests, roots and city streets, was widely shared after design blogs such as Colossal featured it in 2014. The other three pictures use the same trick on a larger scale.
Before scrolling, decide how you will take the test: give yourself one or two seconds per image and say your first answer out loud, before your brain has time to find the other figures.
Picture 1: lips, trees or roots?
At a glance this is a pair of closed lips. Look again and the upper lip is a dense line of tree crowns, while the lower lip is a tangle of pale roots reaching downward.
You saw the trees first
The traditional reading says you are curious and drawn to new ideas, the sort of person who looks beyond the obvious and gets excited by a good plan. In practice, the dark, textured treetops are the highest-contrast part of the drawing, so many people land there.
You saw the lips first
Seeing the overall shape first is said to mark someone who takes things as they come and prefers the familiar to risk. Perception research would put it differently: you processed the big picture before the details, which most people do most of the time.
You saw the roots first
Roots are linked with growth, so the quiz casts you as someone who keeps improving and likes helping others develop. It is a flattering reading, and a rare one, because the pale roots are the faintest element of the picture.
Picture 2: fighters, a wave or a skull?
A wave explodes against dark rocks. Inside the spray two muscular men are locked in a fight, and the space between them, together with the foam below, forms a large grinning skull.
You saw the two men first
The quiz says this shows someone who puts other people first, sometimes so much that they take on too much and give too generously. Faces and human bodies are among the things our brains detect fastest, so this is a very common first answer.
You saw the splashing water first
Seeing the storm before anything else supposedly marks someone who is alert to trouble and knows things are not always what they seem, yet prefers not to dig too deep and stays within safe limits.
You saw the skull first
Surprisingly, the skull is given the most upbeat reading: you are said to be an optimist who sees possibilities others miss and finds more the harder you look. Spotting it first usually means you saw the image as a whole rather than focusing on the figures.
Picture 3: a tree, a woman or a landscape?
An old, broad-trunked tree stands in a meadow under a cloudy sky. Its bark folds into the face, shoulders, breasts and hips of a woman, while a wide landscape stretches away behind her.
You saw the tree first
The quiz reading is that you do not overthink and tend to rein yourself in, sometimes missing what is going on around you. A gentler interpretation: you trust your first impression and move on.
You saw the woman first
This answer is linked with sharp observation, noticing what others overlook and a love of taking things apart to see how they work, with a slight tendency to over-analyse.
You saw the landscape first
Looking past the central figure to the background is said to suggest someone a little absent-minded who sticks with what they know. It may also just mean your eyes went to the brightest open area of the drawing.
Picture 4: lovers or an explosion?
A man and a woman embrace and kiss, their bodies rising out of the column of a huge mushroom cloud that billows above them and spreads across a flat plain.
You saw the couple first
The quiz says relationships matter enormously to you and your partner is always on your mind, perhaps to the point of clinginess. Since the embrace sits right in the centre of the image, this is the most common answer by far.
You saw only the woman
Noticing the woman alone, rather than the pair, is read as a sign that you may feel lonelier than you admit and would like more attention. If that rings true, it is worth taking seriously, whatever a drawing says.
You saw the explosion first
Spotting the blast is linked with caution: someone a little unpredictable who still avoids anything likely to end badly. Many people would simply call that sensible.
Why your eyes choose one image first
Pictures like these exploit a basic job of the visual system: deciding which shapes are the "figure" and which are the background. The Danish psychologist Edgar Rubin studied this in 1915, and his famous vase that is also two faces in profile still appears in textbooks. With such ambiguous or "bistable" images the brain cannot hold both interpretations at once, so it settles on one, and after a while it may flip to the other.
Which one wins first depends on several ordinary factors: where your gaze happens to land, which area has the strongest contrast or largest size, whether a shape matches something your brain is primed to find (faces and bodies are top of the list), and what you have recently seen or thought about. Artists such as Dagorov, Salvador Dalí and the Mexican painter Octavio Ocampo build on exactly these tendencies.
Can a picture reveal your personality?
Psychologists have tried for a century to read personality from reactions to ambiguous images, most famously with the Rorschach inkblot test. In a major 2000 review, Scott Lilienfeld, James Wood and Howard Garb found that the Rorschach and similar projective tests had weak scoring reliability and inconsistent validity, with only a few measures, such as signs of disordered thinking, holding up. Clinicians who added the inkblots to other information often became less accurate rather than more.
Internet quizzes like this one have no research behind them at all. They feel accurate because of the "Barnum" or Forer effect: in 1948 the psychologist Bertram Forer gave students the same vague personality sketch, and they rated it as a very good description of themselves. Statements such as "you care about others" or "you sometimes overthink" fit almost everyone.
So enjoy the art, compare answers with friends and notice how differently people see the same drawing. For a real picture of your personality, validated questionnaires based on the Big Five traits, ideally discussed with a qualified psychologist, are a far better guide.
Sources: Images by Christo Dagorov; Colossal: surreal pencil drawings of lips; Emory Report: Lilienfeld on projective tests; quiz readings first published by Awareness Act.
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