The law of familiarity states that things that form patterns that are familiar or meaningful are likely to be grouped together (Goldstein, 2011). This law, like other Gestalt laws, can lead to incorrect perceptions. Sometimes incorrect perceptions can be troublesome especially when you are a young child.

Thinking back to when I was younger, I had a very active imagination. My imagination lead to a number of restless nights thanks to watching one too many scary movies! I picture myself lying in bed and the room is mostly dark except for the soft glow of the nightlight. I am already on edge, perhaps from a very eventful day so I find myself staring at the nightlight. Something close to the nightlight catches me eye. My mind is insisting there is a person crouching behind the chair in my room. My breath catches in my throat.

At this point my heart is pounding in my chest. I can make out the large hat he is wearing on his head and his pointy nose. It seems like the more I stare the bigger his nose gets! He is starting to look a lot like the bad guy in a scary movie. Now my active imagination is insisting that I just saw his head turn. I try to summon the courage to rush to the other side of my room to turn the light on. I take a deep breath, count to 3 and run!

Finally, with the light turned on, I can breathe normally again! As I look at my room in the daylight I wonder how on earth I could have thought there was a man couching behind my chair. The chair is empty and behind it sits a giant teddy bear that I won at a carnival. On his head is a black hat I wore the year I was a witch for Halloween. Don’t I feel silly now?

Because I spent a little too much time watching scary movies when I was younger, the “bad guys” became familiar to me. My mind was already on edge and it didn’t take much to turn normal things from my room into the pattern of a strange man crouching behind my chair. Once I saw the image of the man it was hard not to see him again once I turned the light back off, so I decided to do some rearranging to help myself get a better nights’ sleep next time.

Because things that form patterns that are meaningful are likely to be grouped together, my imagination filled in the gaps and I saw a strange man crouching in my room. It was very likely that I had the image of the man already in my head from watching horror movies and the shadow in my room just happened to fit that same pattern. Once I perceived the shadow as a man it was difficult to see it as anything else so I moved some things around so I no longer had that shadow in my room.

References

Goldstein, E. (2011). Cognitive psychology: Connecting mind, research, and everyday experience (3rd ed.). Wadsworth Cengage Learning.