Universal Principles of Design, Revised and Updated
by William Lidwell, Kritina Holden, Jill Butler
Top-Down Lighting Bias
A tendency to interpret shaded or dark areas of an object as shadows resulting from a light source above the object.1
Humans are biased to interpret objects as being lit from a single light source from above. This bias is found across all age ranges and cultures, and likely results from humans evolving in an environment lit from above by the Sun. Had humans evolved in a solar system with more than one sun, the bias would be different.
As a result of the top-down lighting bias, dark or shaded areas are commonly interpreted as being farthest from the light source, and light areas are interpreted as being closest to the light source. Thus, objects that are light at the top and dark at the bottom are interpreted as convex, ...
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