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19 January Do My Eyes Deceive?Whilst part of what we perceive comes through our senses from the object before us, another part (and it may be the larger part) always comes out of our own mind.
~ William James
I think it is funny that I should choose to discuss perception right now as currently, as my last post indicates to anyone not in Canada, we are going through an election in which perception is paying a major role in both the campaigns and, more than likely, the way most Canadians will vote. That being said this will have nothing to do with the election beyond this next statement: do not fall prey to the recency effect and anchoring. There is a reason that the Conservative campaign is focussed on one event (the Sponsorship Scandal / Gomery Report): they are relying on our cognitive biases to get into office. They are anchoring our perceptions of the Liberal Government to one event in order to sway the vote. Do not fall prey to their manipulation! If you are going to vote, do it in an informed way; find out the facts before you make a decision. Become an educated voter, do not rely on one party to tell you the "truth" about the others for they are only trying to push their own agendas and will do it in whatever way they can (and this goes for all parties).
Now back to the point. I love perception. I love the way our brain plays tricks on us, I love the way we see things that are not there, I love the way that you and I can differ about what we see based upon our previous experiences ... in short, as I said at the start, I love perception! What, you may be asking yourself, has brought on this enthusiasm regarding what some may consider a mundane topic? Aside from sheer insanity and odd interests I have been wanting to write about perception for awhile but the inspiration was not there. All this changed back in early November when I downloaded my pictures from my trip out west onto my computer. Upon scanning through my photos I discovered the following picture (and aside from adding the little silver name in the corner and adjusting the size to fit this screen this picture has not been modified in the least).
 The image is better here as it is larger http://img280.imageshack.us/img280/3048/mermaid2tu.jpg
Now I know my reaction to the picture, what was yours? What did you see? Did you see, as every person I have shown this picture to saw, a mermaid (or as one friend put it "a friggin' hot mermaid!)? It amazes me; I know what I took a picture of and it most certainly was not a mermaid and yet... So why do we see a mermaid? PERCEPTION! Let me explain.
According to cognitive and social psychology we are predisposed to see order, pattern and meaning in the world around us; therefore, when confronted with ambiguous data we impose order, pattern and meaning on it. The tendency to impose order is so strong we do it even when there is no meaning to the random clusters of data. Why do we do it in the first place? Adaptiveness and evolution: we can capitalize on ordered phenomena in ways that we cannot on those that are random. We make discoveries and advancements because we detect patterns and make connections but sometimes, there is nothing there. This is where our shortcut fails. When there is no pattern or order in the data we can still impose it, causing a problem with our perception of a given situation, image, etc. and distorting our judgement.
But how does a cognitive fallibility explain seeing a mermaid in the above picture? Consider that the image is a cluster of ambiguous information and we have to make sense of it. Given that we will impose order on what we see, we now have something in the water. Our perception of ambiguous data is biased by what we expect to see, which is based on both what we have experienced before and what we know and/or believe to be true. Although you (and I) will argue that mermaids do not exist we still see one. How can we see something that we believe does not even exist? It is simple. Our perception of the information is of a human-like character in the water. We can look at it and know it is not human (there is something about the hip curve and leg area that does not ring true to a human being) but we cannot deny the likeness. Since there is evidence to the eye to suggest that the image is not human we reassess the image based on what is there: water, a human-like form, what could arguably be a tail and we perceive a mermaid. Our reaction is mermaid because of what we know a mermaid to look like, even if the only information we have about mermaids is fictional. We have taken ambiguous data, imposed order using our previous knowledge and experiences and voila, we see what isn't there (and to think it happens so quickly without our knowledge ... the mind is a fascinating thing).
Now, although this is a rather simple and trivial example that has little impact think of the consequences that even something this tiny could possibly have. For example, someone could view this picture and either not read the entry or perform another cognitive error and believe the photo to be proof of the existence of mermaids (I now this is a stretch but let me just use my imagination for a couple of minutes). Tourism to Jasper could increase with a believe that there are mermaids there (the photo was taken in the first of five lakes - Valley of the Five Lakes) much like the myth of the Loch Ness Monster did. Think about it, if such a trivial thing could actually have conaequences what is happening in everyday life? How many times are we making errors in judgement and decision making based upon our perception of ambiguous information? It is something to think about if nothing else for as Artemus Ward said: "It ain't so much the things we don't know that get us into trouble. It's the things we know that just ain't so."
For more information of cognitive biases, fallacies, errors and perception check out:
How we Know What Isn't So - Thomas Gilovich
The Person and the Situation - Lee Ross & Richard E. Nisbett
The Psychology of Judgement and Deision Making - Scott Plous
By the way, the picture was of wood in the water. 回應 (9)
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