perception | Psych 256: Cognitive Psychology FA16

The past few weeks have been a tumultuous time for the United States due to the presidential election. We now know that president-elect Trump will take office on January 20, 2017, but I remain perplexed by the massive amounts of advertising and mixed messages both majority candidates presented to the US population. Just in my mailbox alone, I received approximately 140 pieces of literature in regard to the upcoming political races. This does not take into account all the other various forms of advertising that we as Americans were subjected to on a daily basis.

In an article by Tsipursky (2016a) the author suggested that the problem with American politics is irrationality, which ultimately leads to incorrect assessments of reality in addition to poor political results. Emotions, perceptions, and biases cause these thinking and emotional reasoning errors and result in poor decisions and assessments (Tsipursky, 2016a).

In reviewing the Clinton and Trump campaigns one could easily assess the use of the horns effect. Research by Belludi (2010) suggests biases of the horns effect are a negative perception in one area that is now perceived in every aspect without any further evidence to suggest this assumption. The Trump campaign made use of this effect by suggesting terrorism is initiated by Islamic extremists which places all Muslims in the category of terrorists (Tsipursky, 2016a). Whereas, the Clinton campaign suggested all Trump supporters are “a basket of deplorables” who subscribe to “irredeemable” inequalities of sexism, racism, and homophobia (Tsipursky, 2016a). In reviewing these two types of biases, we can assess that the information is incorrect and does not stand true for all Muslims and Trump supporters.

The illusory truth effect according to Lexikon Online (2016) suggests one believes information to be correct through repetition. The Trump campaign may have convinced many millions of people around the world that NAFTA was “the worst deal ever signed” with the repetitive statements (Tsipursky, 2016b). This statement was just the opinion of the Trump campaign and not the majority of experts. However, this biased statement has settled with several million supporters.

As you can see, the voters of this election have been tainted with psychological warfare that led to many irrational judgments. Our emotions, perceptions, and biases may have caused us to vote for a candidate that we may not have chosen otherwise. However, we may not even be aware of these thinking errors until now. I believe in order to make an informed and rational decision a voter needed to diligently search various types of websites and fact-check statements and other informational sites to make an informed decision in regard to which candidate they felt best matched their personal beliefs and values. This obviously was a difficult and tedious task to conduct due to the mainstream media’s bias toward the candidate of their liking.

Belludi, N. (2010). The Halo and Horns Effects (Rating Errors). Retrieved from

http://www.rightattitudes.com/2010/04/30/rating-errors-halo-effect-horns-effect/

Park, D., Schwarz, N., Skurnik, I., Yoon, C. (2005). How Warning about False Claims becomes Recommendations. Journal of Consumer Research. March 21, 2005. Retrieved from http://lexikon.stangl.eu/14988/illusion-of-truth-effect/

Tsipursky, G., (2016a) Fact-checking Clinton and Trump is not enough. The Conversation. Retrieved from

https://theconversation.com/fact-checking-clinton-and-trump-is-not-enough-67506

Tsipursky, G., (2016b). The Worst Problem in American Politics? Research-based suggestions for how to deal with the worst problem in US politics. Psychology Today. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/intentional-insights/201611/the-worst-problem-in-american-politics

As human beings we all can perceive the same incident or occurrence differently than each other. So what is reality? Is one person wrong and the other person right? The example I would like to focus on now is something that took the internet by storm a couple of years ago and is still much debated today. Is it a white and gold dress or black and blue dress? Bottom-Up Processing is at play in determining the color of the dress. What we see is light rays that are transformed into a sensory experience via the retina, which travels to the optic nerve and creates an electrical signal, then sends this signal to the processing center in the brain. Once at the processing center in the brain it determines what color we perceive and thus creates our version of reality (Goldstein, 2011, p. 38, 50).

How we perceive the color of the dress depends on if we see it as a bright background light with a shadow cast over the dress or as very bright light making the dress appear lighter when it is actually darker (Corum, 2015). The cornea is responsible for letting light rays into the eye, in fact, 65 percent of the eye’s refractory ability to reflect light from an object comes from the (center of the) cornea (Davidson, 2015). That being said whether or not we perceive the dress as black and blue or white and gold is determined by top-down processing, whether or not we perceive it as a shadow cast over the dress or a bright light reflected onto. Since it is just a picture online, our brains use prior knowledge to determine the color, for example, when a shadow is cast over an object it appears darker or when a bright light is shined on an object it appears lighter (Goldstein, 2011, p. 57).

The color we see an object as is the color that is reflected off the item. For example, if all colors are reflected off an item then we see white, but if all colors are absorbed by an item then we see black (Idaho Public Television, 2016). In the dress example when we see a bright light coming from behind the brighter light makes the dress appear darker (i.e. black and blue). But when we see a shadow cast over the dress the darkness of the shadow makes the dress appear lighter (i.e. white and gold). Color constancy is the ability of color to appear the same in different contexts (i.e. a lot of light or little to no light). Color is subjective, since it can change color in different environments (Brainard, 2004). In Image 3 (link at bottom) the dress is seen as definitely black and blue, with other context clues such as the fair skin color of the woman wearing the dress, the white wedding dress of the bride, and the dark curtains in the background. With all these things to compare the color of the dress too, it makes it obvious its true color (Corum, 2015).

Whether or not the dress is black and blue or white and gold is still a heavily debated topic because everyone believes that the way they see it is real or reality. The fact that they perceive this as reality makes them believe that something is wrong with the other person who sees a different perception. When viewing the photograph, I see it differently because sometimes I see it as white and gold and other times I see it as black and blue. Since my reality changes I understand how different people can see the dress differently. Color constancy is at play and is not something that is 100 percent accurate, since other things can affect the color reflected by light off an object, such as colors reflected off other nearby objects and background light. Top-down processing is also at play as we use clues from things we have previously seen to draw conclusions on the color of the dress, is it a shadow casts over a white and gold dress or a bright background light reflected onto a black and blue dress. So in conclusion, reality is not something that always holds true to everyone, but is rather subjective and determined by the individual.

References

Brainard, B. (2004). “Color constancy: David Brainard Lab” [PDF Document]. Retrieved from

Click to access ColorConstancySage.pdf

Corum, J. (2015, Feb. 27). “Is that dress white and gold or blue and black”. New York Times. Retrieved
from http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/02/28/science/white-or-blue-dress.html

Davidson, M. W. (2015). Human Vision and Color Perception. Molecular Expressions. Optical Microscopy
Primer : Physics of Light and Color. Retrieved from
https://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/lightandcolor/humanvisionintro.html

Goldstein, E. B. (2011). Cognitive Psychology: Connecting mind, research and everyday experience
(Vol. 3). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.

Idaho Public Television. (2016). “Light & color: Facts”. Retrieved from
http://idahoptv.org/sciencetrek/topics/light_and_color/facts.cfm

Psych 256: Cognitive Psychology FA16 – 002

Making connections between theory and reality

Tag Archives: perception

The Psychology of Politics

Is Perception Reality?