Proffitt argues that perception is not fixed: it is flexible, reflecting a person’s physiological state. Your conscious perception of slant depends on your current ability to walk up or down hills—hard work that should not be undertaken lightly. If you are tired, frail, scared or carrying a load, your assessment of the hill—the one that guides your actions—will differ from what you see. Not by choice, but by design. It is the way you are wired.
The Witt-Proffitt team published another report on the observation, well known in sports lore, that baseball players perceive the ball to be larger when they are hitting well and smaller when they are on a losing streak. Since then, Witt, now a professor at Purdue University, along with her student Travis Dorsch, has pursued this intriguing link between how success (or lack of it) in a task affects one’s perception of the world.
In their experiment, 23 volunteers had to kick an American football through the field goal from the 10-yard line. After a warm-up, participants were asked to judge the height and width of the goal by adjusting a handheld, scaled-down model of the goal made out of PVC pipes. They then each performed 10 kicks. Immediately after the final kick, participants repeated the perceptual measurement.
The result was striking. Before kicking, both groups had the same perception of the size of the goal (incidentally, an inaccurate one: everybody underestimated its actual width-to-height ratio). But after 10 kicks, the poor performers (those who scored two or fewer successful kicks) saw the goal as about 10 percent narrower than they had before, whereas the good kickers (those who scored three or more) perceived the goal to be about 10 percent wider. How well you have performed over the past few minutes influences the way you see the world! Not just metaphorically, but on a physiological level—it changes your actual perceptions.
After more data mining, the two psychologists discovered that the people who missed the goal because they tended to kick the ball too short perceived the crossbar as being higher than did their more successful peers, whereas those who missed because they kicked wide judged the upright field posts to be narrower.
So by now you may be thinking: How convenient! The perceptual system offers us self-serving justifications for bad performance. But there is likely some value here, evolutionarily speaking: if people perceive the goal as higher or smaller than it actually is, they will aim more precisely the next time. What happens in football also holds for softball and golf, Witt and her colleagues have found—and, most likely, for life in general.
Our conscious perception of the world, though relatively stable, is not static. We are incapable of being fully objective, even in our most mundane observations and impressions. Our awareness of the objects around us is informed and fine-tuned by any number of transient factors—our strength and energy levels, our sense of confidence, our fears and desires. Being human means seeing the world through your own, constantly shifting, lens.
This article was originally published with the title Looks Can Deceive.
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13 Comments
Add CommentIt could explain some peoples choice of marriage partner and how you can go to bed with a gorgeous woman and wake up with a dog.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWonderfully simple experiments reinforce what most (educated) people already knew... and summed up nicely in the last paragraph of the piece.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe human organism is a wonderfully evolved whole and our perceptions of "reality" are by necessity subjectively serving its needs, whether we are aware of them... or most likely... not.
The conscious brain's activity is but a drop in a very large bucket of neural activity, where the heavy lifting occurs. The insight of these experiments... along with mountains of other eevidence, renders the notion of "free will" absolutely moot.
Spin-oza -
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisInteresting comment. However, I'd be interested in understanding more of your perception regarding "renders the notion of 'free will' absolutely moot."
Thanks.
I would disagree - it seems to me that this article makes manifest that we make free will choices ("The hill is too steep to climb, I will go around") based on more information than objective observation would provide.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor instance, in the hill that is "too steep"; while, objectively, I know it to be less steep, I also know that my bum knee is acting up, and that this hill is known as "rattlesnake hill" around here for a reason.
It doesn't negate free will, it stresses that objective reality - that which can be perceived - is lacking enough data to make a self serving decision.
Another way to look at this is to say, objectivity is overrated.
This is another instance that we should not be surprised about but we are when it we find it happens to us.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEvery organism it would seem builds a perception of reality that is flexible and benefits the organism (too much data, limited sensors and processing time).
Not a surprising statement until you realize it means you also. This is no trippy mind-bender either, YES you live in a virtual perceived world of your making . . but NO that perception difference does not change reality and a too big a gap at the wrong time can be quite deadly . as reality always trumps your perception of it no matter how hard you wish.
Our system is build for speed and immediate survival . . When accuracy is needed we must ALL assume our first impression is wrong and take steps to take the time and effort to discover the inaccuracies and be ready to conclude that we where wrong.
Science itself is all about finding the new, but also understanding humans make errors ( a default state) and making sure to minimize, cross check and self correct them.
The world we perceive is an illusion! It is, as the yogis say, MAYA.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlternatively, perhaps our perception of physical reality is a function of our objective external assessments and our internal subjective state. Our response to external conditions must account for our transient internal capabilities to best ensure success. We are not likely to succeed in our current physical challenges if we approach them based on yesterday's fully rested and nourished condition rather than our current exhausted state.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFinally. An explination to how our parents walked to school every day uphill both ways!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIC2e... since this is not a post on the illusion of free-will, in the contra-causal sense... i "will" not post volumes on the evidence and observations negating such an absurd premise. It should be clear however, that every thing about our selves is naturally caused and determined: genetics & biochemistry (including neuronal development and function). It should also be without question that our minds and physical brains are the same: there is not, nor has their ever been, a "Ghost in the Machine". Put another way, we cannot be the "cause of ourselves" in the exercise of unfettered (supernatural) FW.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEven though we are full caused & determined "causal agents" we, like all animals must by necessity "choose" among alternatives for either survival or to meet the hierarchy of needs we perceive any any given time. As long as we are not coerced, we may exercise common parlance " FW, but not free will that is beyond the scope of our evolved natural being. Thus, no FW exists in a supernatural or contra-causal sense... nor has it ever been demonstrated.
Does the serial murderer, addict (take your pick), pathologic liar (uh, theres' a genetic basis for that), anorectic or morbidly obese... etc. ad nauseum, freely choose to pursue such self-destructive, maladaptive behaviors? Did you choose the time and place of your birth, your parents... and whether or not you are afflicted with Trisomy 21, craniosynostosis, autism, Fragile-X, schizophrenia. Alzheimer's... etc.?
Read the pioneering work of LIbet or Pasqual-Leone... or the works of such minds as Dennet, Flannagon, Strawson, Pereboom, Wegner... or icons such as Darwin, Einstein, Russell, Spinoza, Schopenhauer, Voltaire, among others... all of whom reject such fantasy.
The evidence from genetics - proteinomics... and neurobiology have pulled away the curtain from the alleged Wizard of Free Will... in the Illusive Land of Oz.
Cheers to All.
The Unified Theory of the Universe by Joseph Rubino(CWRU)September 22, 1999. Thinking is universal(creation itself if you will). The shortcoming is the language which is only the form of verbalization of thinking. Need I add all human endeavor. Explanation: The contribution of Western theoretical science to the world has shown how nature works: the discovery of atomic structure, space, DNA advances,etc. Their application and the ability to manipulate the workings of Nature(such as gene therapy, cloning, etc.)have unimaginable(hopefully positive)consequences for the present and future of man and civilization itself. However can we ever say why nature manifests itself the way it does? i.e. why the proverbial oak seed grows into a tree? Science can only observe its structure, even manipulate, but perhaps can never explain why it must become a tree: "And the parts of a candle, successively melting, turn to flame, and give us both light and heat. These and the like effects we see and know; but the causes that operate, and the manner are produced in, we can only guess and probably conjecture."(John Locke in The English Philosophers from Bacon to Mill, edited by Edwin A. Burtt, Random House, 1939, p.386.) The same applies for the entire observable universe and all things in it. I suggest it may be the "Universality of Thinking" which also transc ends space and time itself as well as the duality of God(s) and creation present in the Middle Eastern and Western tradition. Professor Hawking in his book A Brief History of Time says:"However, if we do discover a complete Theory, it should in time be understandable in broad principle by everyone, not just a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the question of why it is that we and the universe exist."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is a beautifully written article. I love the very last paragraph that states what it is to be human. Many people would assume that one only makes excuses to improve others outlook on them. The idea that we do it to protect our self against self-depreciation is new to me and fascinating.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAfter reading this and some of the experiments constructed, I immediately remembered watching a show about how we percieve colors to be different based on angles and shadowing. Illusions and our imagination play big roles in perception as well.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlternatively maybe you didn't marry that person based on looks maybe the way they did thier makeup, or the way their body looked when you met them is what attracted you to them. Coming from personal experience when you date the same person for a while you tend to get comfortable around them therefore you let yourself go not looking as attractive as you once did to your partner
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