For a brief moment, it feels like a whole new world, like a map out of a Tolkien fantasy novel. But it’s not, it’s just the same old world map reversed upside down. But as I browsed the inverted map my preconceived ideas and expectations were missing.

In common speech, we often refer to places being "above" or "below" others. Think of how you would say you're about to travel to the state or country to your north or south (to go "down" to Alabama from Tennessee, or "up" to Washington from Oregon). Without even mentioning geography, ask any grade school student whether Mexico is "above" or "below" the United States. We're all familiar with the "land down under". Researchers posit the observed association between map-position and goodness/badness (north=good; south=bad) is caused by the combination of (i) the convention of consistently placing north at the top of maps, and (ii) a much more general association between vertical position and goodness/badness (up=good, down=bad), which has been documented in numerous contexts (e.g., power/status, profits/prices, affect/emotion, and even the divine). [3] To summarize, unconditionally accepting the north-up map convention without at least appreciating the effect stands at odds with viewing all people and places within the world equally. However, the issue of "up" and "down" does become an issue when viewing the surface of the earth projected onto a flat piece of paper (a map). And the effect of the orientation of a map is more significant than you might realize.uo sǝlƃƃᴉnbs ɟo ɥɔunq ɐʇsnɾ sᴉƃuᴉʇᴉɹʍʇɐɥʇǝǝs noʎ puɐ sǝsɐᴉq snoᴉɔsuoɔun ɹnoʎ ǝsol no⅄˙sɹǝʇʇǝl ɟo ǝlqɯnɾɐʇsnɾ sǝɯoɔǝq ʇᴉ uʍop ǝpᴉsdn ʇxǝʇ uɹnʇ noʎɟI James Eagleman There is no good reason that the northern hemisphere is usually at the top and the southern hemisphere is at the bottom of maps. It’s just convention. So you see the convention of drawing the world map with the northern-hemisphere up really does put the north in the good psychological zone and the south in the bad psychological zone. In the middle ages, East was often placed at top. This is the origin of the term "The Orient" to refer to East Asia.

If nothing else, it’s a sure-fire way to make the world seem fresh, and unexplored, once more. With so few earthbound discoveries left for our generation to make, all we can do is – to paraphrase Marcel Proust – look again at the world we’ve got, but this time, through different eyes. Imagine you are a prehistoric hunter-gatherer human traveled from the far distant past and arrived magically to wherever you are right now. What would you think about what you saw? Isn’t the very screen you are reading this on magical? Montoro, Pedro R.; Contreras, María José; Elosúa, María Rosa; Marmolejo-Ramos, Fernando (2015), "Cross-modal metaphorical mapping of spoken emotion words onto vertical space", Frontiers in Psychology, 6: 1205, doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01205, PMC 4531208, PMID 26322007 . Below is a list of geographic features that we feel are much more noticeable with the South-Up orientation:

Nelson, L.D.; Simmonds, J.P. (2009), "On southbound ease and northbound fees: Literal consequences of the metaphoric link between vertical space and cardinal direction.", Journal of Marketing Research, 46 (6): 715–726, doi: 10.1509/jmkr.46.6.715, S2CID 16363025 . Go ahead and zoom in and look for yourself! I’m not making this stuff up! Vacation At Home By Adopting A Different Perspective Russia...is still huge. The reason it might look bigger is simply that we've grown so accustomed to its size when viewing conventional maps, that we simply tune it out. Seeing the world "upside down" is almost like looking at the world for the first time, in which case the biggest country (by far) is sure to be immediately noticed. We never experience the world directly as it is. We only ever see the world from our own point of view.

It’s not just one phase. In fact there this a frequent association between vertical position up/down and goodness/badness.

We advocate the Upside Down orientation because it unfamiliar and thus forces us to view the world differently! The computer strategy game Neocolonialism developed by Seth Alter uses a south-up map, with the developer stating it is intended to "evoke discomfort" and to "exemplify the north-south dichotomy of the world, wherein the southern hemisphere is generally poorer than the northern hemisphere." [10] See also [ edit ] Pay extra attention to your current surroundings, look with the eyes of a painter or a photographer, what interesting angles can you find?

De Armendi, Nicole (2009), "The Map as Political Agent: Destabilising the North-South Model and Redefining Identity in Twentieth-Century Latin American Art" (PDF), St Andrews Journal of Art History and Museum Studies: 5–17, archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-04-19 , retrieved 2016-01-25 . While the orientation of a map might seem harmless, it can have a significant effect on one's perception of the world, and the relative importance of different places. Map details: Everything is reversed on this upside down world map! South is at the top of the map, north is at the base and the southern hemisphere is now above everything else. The countries in the east are now on the left side of the map, and those in the west are now on the right side.According to Dr Jayasuriya, Mercator's version is "extremely bad" for depicting the relative sizes of countries: "That's why Greenland, which is only about 1/14th the size of Africa, looks the same size as Africa," she says. That may seem obvious, but my 'upside-down' map confounds most people who see it. But of course it does: Even NASA has been known to flip photos of the Earth taken from space which depict south on top of the globe to avoid creating confusion. So where does 'north up' culture come from? Sure enough, when shown a map of a hypothetical city and asked where they would like to live, people were significantly more likely to choose an area in the north of the city. And when another group of people were asked where fictitious people of different social status would live, they plotted them on the map with the richest in the north and poorest in the south. Meier, Brian P.; Moller, Arlen C.; Chen, Julie J.; Riemer-Peltz, Miles (2011), "Spatial Metaphor and Real Estate: North-South Location Biases Housing Preference", Social Psychological and Personality Science, 2 (5): 547–553, doi: 10.1177/1948550611401042, S2CID 144903106 .