Gravity and observer's body orientation influence the visual perception of human body postures.

Since human behavior and perception have evolved within the Earth's gravitational field, humans possess an internal model of gravity. Although gravity is known to influence the visual perception of moving objects, the evidence is less clear concerning the visual perception of static objects. We investigated whether a visual judgment of the stability of human body postures (static postures of a human standing on a platform and tilted in the roll plane) may also be influenced by gravity and by the participant's orientation.