Probably everyone is familiar with the wise saying - "beauty is in the eye of the beholder." However, recently scientists have come to the conclusion that literally everything is "in the eye of the beholder." Whatever you are looking for, be it a menacing expression, unethical research methods or just the color blue, you will find it. Even if this is actually not the case, you will easily (and, unconsciously) expand your definition of what you are looking for, and as a result, voila, you will see the object you are looking for right in front of you.
This phenomenon is called “perceptual warping,” and according to a recent study published in Science, it affects everything from concrete assessments to abstract thinking. In the simpler part of the study, scientists showed participants 1,000 points one at a time, in shades that ranged from blue to purple, and the task was to determine if a particular point was blue. For the first two hundred tests, the points were evenly distributed over the blue-violet part of the spectrum, so that about half of them were more blue than not. However, in subsequent studies, scientists began to gradually remove the blue dots until the vast majority were in the violet part of the spectrum.
Curiously, during each of the tests, the participants identified approximately the same number of dots as blue. As the dots became more violet, the definition of "blue" simply expanded to include more violet tones. This continued even when the participants were told in advance that towards the end there would be more purple dots than blue ones. The effect persisted even after participants were offered a cash prize unless they mistakenly recognize the purple dots as blue.
Researchers found the same perceptual distortion when they asked subjects to complete more challenging tasks. For example, they were asked to rate faces for threatening expressions, and to classify scientific hypotheses as ethical and unethical. As faces became more tender and hypotheses became more ethical, participants began to identify faces and hypotheses previously seen as “good” as threatening and unethical.
Are we all simply incapable of making an objective judgment? Not really. This study suggests that we perceive even objective concepts as relative. We think we are able to identify purple circles, but in fact we are highlighting the most purple circle we have seen recently. The human brain does not classify objects and concepts like a computer. The concepts in our heads are somewhat blurry. This phenomenon is of great importance for … yes, in general, for everything.
For example, Matt Warren of Science believes that perceptual warps can explain the tremendous amount of cynicism in our world. “Humanity has made great strides in addressing social problems such as poverty and illiteracy, but as these phenomena became less prevalent, problems that had previously seemed insignificant began to appear to people more and more acute,” he writes. Nonetheless, perceptual distortion may just as well explain optimism in times of disaster: when things get worse, problems that seemed serious yesterday seem insignificant.
Perceptual deformation can manifest itself at a broader cultural level. There, it takes on the features of "concept warping," and some argue that this is the phenomenon that explains the growing number of psychiatric diagnoses in the Western world. It can also explain more mundane phenomena, such as "politeness", which now allows you to check your mobile phone, but without being distracted for too long, during dinner with friends.
The word "deformation" has negative connotations, but none of them are inherently harmful. Deformation of concepts and perceptions means that people tend to shrink and expand different categories in their heads, and not notice that the outside world is constantly changing, constantly in motion. This is critical to survival. For example, everyone's idea of happiness and success should expand and contract so that we don't become too depressed or, on the contrary, indulge in euphoria. And yet, when people categorize different things, we need clear, specific parameters for different categories, otherwise instincts can easily lead us astray.
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Igor Abramov