ABSTRACT
So far, I have considered the nature of caricatures, their development in the history of art, the invention of computer caricature generators, the use of extreme signals in nature, and some mechanisms that might account for the power of exaggeration. With this background in place, I turn now to cognitive psychologists’ attempts to assess the effectiveness of caricatures and to discover whether caricatures really succeed in their paradoxical attempt, “to be more like the face than the face itself” (Brennan, 1985, p.170). Superportrait effects, where caricatures are recognised better than undistorted images, or are considered to be better likenesses, are the most dramatic evidence for the power of caricatures. Even equivalence of caricatures and more faithful representations would be remarkable, though, given the obvious distortion of caricatures.
