Do you hear far or bar? Ear-puzzling ‘McGurk Effect’ illusion is dividing everyone

A MIND-BLOWING optical illusion that changes what you hear has been revealed.

People can’t get their head around a BBC clip shared on TikTok, showing a man seemingly say ‘bar’.

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Then his lip movements change and he appears to be saying ‘far’.

But all is not what it seems.

The sound is actually exactly the same, yet the lip movements influence what we think we hear.

In fact, the audio says ‘bar’ the entire time – he never says ‘far’.

It’s due to a phenomenon known as the McGurk Effect.

This basically affects how we hear a word based on the manner we see it being pronounced.

That’s because seeing the way someone speaks actually alters how we hear the sound.

“In the illusion, what we see overrides what we hear, so the mouth movements we see as we look at a face can actually influence what we believe we’re hearing,” explained Professor Lawrence Rosenblum, from the University of California Riverside.

“If we close our eyes, we actually hear the sound as it is.

“If we open our eyes, we actually see how the mouth movements can influence what we’re hearing.”

The funny thing is, even knowing that the effect exists you can’t stop it from happening.

Commenting on TikTok, one user said: “Who they fooling cause he is clearly making a different sound. Look at the mouth.”

Another added: “You are correct. I tried this without looking at the screen and could only hear bah, bah, bah.”

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