Factors Affecting Perception

Do you see what I see? Furthermore, how do you know that what you see is real? Figments, illusions, trickery – how do we keep from losing our grip on reality? 

First of all, one must accept that there are two realities (at least); objective reality and subjective reality. What is real for you in your mind may not be an accurate representation of what others experience in objective/shared reality. 

What Is Perception?

Perception is our attempt at interpreting and constructing the subtle informational output of the universe, in order to create a cohesive reality. Our brains are programmed to subconsciously organize and sort these signals very quickly and efficiently, but it’s not a perfect mechanism and there is room for error. There are many times it fills in the blanks with educated guesses. 

The Nature of Perception

We must accept a few things about the art and science of perception, as though they are law; 

• It’s both subjective and objective
• It’s relative 
• It’s contagious (influential)
• It’s not fixed.

How you interpret an event may not be how I interpret it, since we are both using different reference points to recognize what we’re seeing/hearing/smelling, and so on. Recognition comes from the familiarity and patterns of our very personal past experiences, which are relative to us. If we’re persuasive and convincing enough, we may sway someone to conceptualize or remember something as we experienced it, overriding how they initially did. We may spread our viewpoint. Reality is also ever-changing and so are the objective rules we use to sort it (physics laws, ethics, skepticism, etc), and so our perceptions are not fixed either – they are subject to change. 

What’s the Purpose of Perception?

Our brain feels the need to construct conclusions from events because of its integral need to make sense of mess. Our brains do not like disorder, that’s just the way we are. Our intelligence makes us aware of our own consciousness and the nuanced phenomena around us (space, time, material, emotion, etc) and so we can’t help but become less passive to existence. Things don’t just happen to us, but we also happen to them. Life becomes intentional and our ego seeks to find its value and purpose. 

We’ve come to enjoy human connection, something that only works if we sort the chaos and exchange information with each other. We also need to make predictions from past lessons of perception in order to survive and thrive. 

How Do We Perceive? 

The mechanisms we use (both intentionally and automatically) to make sense of an occurrence include observation, critical thinking, sensory processing, intuition, cognition, pattern recognition, prediction, deduction, process of elimination, context clues, common sense, belief, etc. There are many nuanced processes at play, usually working fairly neutrally to assess objectivity. Other times, things aren’t in that grey area. 

What Factors Distort Perception?

Our overwhelmed computer brains can sometimes malfunction, get hacked, or become subjected to the drama of our hearts and convictions. Our attentional mechanisms can be subject to priming, for example, which we’ve seen even on brain imaging. So many factors influence false perception.

External Influences

Maybe the reality itself was just very misleading (i.e. that plastic bag in the middle of the road really did look exactly like a white rabbit and had everyone else swerving too) – or maybe you perceive something in an engineered way because of outside forces, people, things, situations, communities, etc.

• Power of Suggestion/Placebo Effect: The influence others have on our beliefs and reality is really rather incredible (and terrifying). We are all susceptible to a degree. Studies show that placebo medications could account for over half of successful outcomes in the treatment of a condition. 

• Mass Hysteria: Cases of group delusion remain unexplainable, such as the deadly dancing event. Shared Delusion Disorder is very rare, but there have been cases of more than one person sharing the same hallucination or delusion. 

• Misdirection/Deception: Stage Magicians use misdirection as a form of trickery. It’s a masterful skill of distraction to lead the perceiver to believe they’ve observed something, while missing an important part of the scene. This is the customized construction of reality the magician forces upon their audience and is technically a form of deception. They rely on the natural inclination of the brain to infer what’s happening instead of raw observation. Many claim scientists are easier to fool than children because scientists look for cause and effect, instead of just simply observing without expectation. 

• Culture/Upbringing: Culture and community form a micro-reality within the larger one. They’re powerful forces because your community and family are groups you’re typically born into and so the influence is embedded into your processes and values. Your parents and leaders teach you how to perceive and make associations with things like senses and trust. (Strawberries are red/strangers are dangerous/police are the good guys/cursing is a sin). Most of these are subjective opinions and views passed onto you, which will surely affect all future context and assessments of situations. 

• Peer Pressure/Authority: The backbone of marketing, these influences rely on our trust and vulnerability. We’re likely to be swayed by those we idolize (like celebrities) or trust (like police, which is why interrogations often lead to false confessions), and so many passive people are convinced of realities by more assertive people, especially those they’re trying to fit in with or who already share some beliefs (like in cults). 

• Genetics: Passed on by blood family, genetics may cause things like schizophrenia, blindness, or other disorders that cause predispositions to distorted perceptions of reality. Genetics also affects which things deteriorate as we age and how quickly. More on this later. 

• Pollutants: Things like psychoactive drug consumption, lead, mold, high EMF, infrasound, and sleep/food deprivation (to name a few) can lead to distorted sense of reality and sensory malfunction. 

• Equity: Our standing in life/society deeply affects how we perceive things. Factors like oppression/marginalization/trauma will influence the resources we have access to, our outlook/perspective, and our exposure. If your community starves you of access to education, you may never learn that strangers are dangerous or strawberries are red. You may not gain the skills to analyse and predict information properly. Without healthcare you may be subject to delusions that medication could prevent. 

Internal Influences

Sometimes, you’re the one standing in your own way of understanding what’s really happening. Your past self or ego may be overlapping its expectations and assumptions onto a neutral situation, while other factors may be more happenstance. 

• Confirmation Bias: Your expectations of what’s happening next are based in belief and desire. “You see what you want to see”. This is natural, but hard to override if you’re not self aware. Playing the devil’s advocate in any situation can be really helpful. This goes for conviction or skepticism.  

• Reference Points: Our experiences shape our attitudes, beliefs, temperament, actions, values, sense of self, and opinions – all of which can cause bias. We predict the series of events happening in real time based on our past experiences and personal/evolutionary pattern recognition. If we see something start to happen that’s similar to something that’s already happened to us (as far back as childhood), we may anticipate and perceive it ending the same way, even if it doesn’t. This is the cause of many trust issues in relationships. This is called Top-Down Modulation (“people see what they expect to see”). We see the first half and infer the rest, filling in the blanks for efficiency.

• Barnum Effect: We all have an ego, even if you feel you’ve got low self-esteem. The ego exists for self-preservation and it can act out in the form of perceiving personalized affirmations and needing to feel special. The Barnum Effect is the illusion that something (usually positive) is being associated with you personally (like zodiac traits or a psychic reading about how you’ll find love) but is really just a general sweeping statement that most could relate to. Our hopes color a situation and blind us to the genericness of it. Psychics may use this effect to their advantage in cold readings and horoscopes. 

• Delusional Disorders: Not all psychosis is caused by your kin, some is self-induced (we mean that in the kindest way possible). Things like drug use (addiction is likely hereditary, but not always), or isolation can cause the onset of ‘distorted reality’ conditions. 

• Context: Sometimes we don’t even need past experiences to predict or intuit something’s state or outcome. Perhaps this just comes from the id/innate primal evolution, but we can perceive someone walking behind us at night to be threatening or an “uncanny valley” doll to be off-putting, even if we’ve never had a negative experience. We also come to find our peers have intuited the same context. The scene itself has implied its reality in an obvious or accessible way to us. Sometimes, though, this effect is psychosomatic and there isn’t actually a threat. Contextual factors can conflict, like in this study that proves that being in nature relaxes us, while being in potentially paranormal locations causes us stress – but being in paranormal locations outdoors in nature seems to result in anxiety overriding the eco-catharsis. 

• Neurological Changes: Factors like aging play a huge role in perception, especially through our 5 senses. As we age our capacity to accurately process (eyesight and hearing especially) information deteriorates, as well as our ability to recall things (even if we may have perceived them accurately). This is why some demographics hear things differently (like the Yanny vs. Laurel trend) or have access to different frequencies than others. Deteriorating medical conditions may behave similarly or in tandem to the aging process (Dementia, MS, etc).   

• Intelligence/Wisdom: While intelligence is largely influenced by genetics and privileged access to resources, we acknowledge that part of it is personal responsibility (most have access to the internet and all its information). Intelligence is like a muscle that we must workout, and if we don’t; we are subject to gullibility/suggestibility and misunderstanding. Things like critical thinking, self awareness, independent thinking, connecting dots, deduction, process of elimination, etc must be somewhat personally developed. Resources help immensely. “I stopped explaining myself when I realized people only understand from their level of perceptions.”

• Character: One’s natural disposition is likely genetic, environmental, and personal, playing a small part in perception. Things like compliancy/stubbornness, temperament, empathy, common sense, cognitive sharpness, confidence, adaptability, etc could all influence perspective and vulnerability to influences. People with low confidence have been found to be more susceptible to false memories from hypnosis, and other forms of deception (conspiracy theories, cults, pseudoscience, etc). 

Perception in a Paranormal Context

The role of preconceived beliefs and suggestion in the paranormal field can be devastating to the scientific method and neutral approach that’s aimed for by teams like ours. 

Two studies, one involving a fake psychic bending a key and the other involving a fake psychic channeling a spirit who moved a table, have presented conclusive evidence that a prior belief in the paranormal and suggestion cause increased gullibility to faked phenomena. 

In the first study, they explore the role of reassurance from the “psychic” that the key continued bending out of their grasp, as well as the role of social influence from staged co-witnesses who make scripted “observations” in front of the testee (about also seeing the key continue to bend). Both tricks were found to significantly increase the likelihood that the testee would believe the incident was genuinely paranormal and did indeed continue to bend. They were also found to be more susceptible to this belief if they already believed in the paranormal. For reference, no one from the control group (no exposure to ‘psychic’ nor peer suggestion) reported seeing continued bending of the key. 

In the second study, the paranormal believers remained convinced the table moved even with naysayers trying to convince them otherwise, proving confirmation bias as well. They had already made up their minds. 

Both studies proved the same effects, however it’s unclear if testees formed their final conclusions from pure persuasion or if a vivid false memory was also created. 

Many other similar studies have concluded the same thing; the power of suggestion in an already spooky context, with a group that likely already believes, is a recipe for a contorted perception of reality. The dark side of the paranormal market thrives on this vulnerability; pseudoscience like homeopathy and (some) hypnosis wind up convincing people of things that never happened while profiting massively off of their trust. The funny thing is; sometimes that false belief comes true in a strange placebo poetic justice. Sometimes it just results in manipulation. 

Either way, we don’t think these tactics should go unregulated, nor should deception be intentional or corrupt. The key to remaining objective and grounded in the most accurate version of reality possible is to use every tool at one’s disposal; self awareness, controlled peer corroboration, an open mind, equipment/evidence, playing devil’s advocate, peer review, and structure (such as the scientific methodology). 

We strive to remain neutral and calm under pressure, managing expectations constantly and corroborating our experiences with things that don’t lie; tons of tested equipment! 

Follow us on our socials for our adventures and journey to maintaining objectivity in such a tricky field!