- The past: our experience
- The present: the current context
- The future: out goals
Perception Biased by Experience - The past
If we are trying to find something, but it is in a different place or looks different from usual, we might miss it even though it is in plain view because experience tunes us to look for expected features in expected locations.
Perception Biased by Current Context - The Present
Our overall comprehension of a sentence or of a paragraph can even influence what words we see in it - The same letter sequence can be read as different words depending on the meaning of the surrounding paragraph.
This biasing of perception by the surrounding context works between different senses too. Perceptions in any of our five senses may affect simultaneous perceptions in any of our other senses. For example:
- What we see can be biased by what we are hearing, and vise versa.
- What we feel with our tactile sense can be biased by what we are hearing, seeing or smelling.
Perception Biased by Goals - The Future
Are there scissors here?
Our goals filter our perceptions in other perceptual senses as well as in vision: things unrelated to our goals tend to be filtered out preconsciously, never registering in our conscious mind. We scan quickly and superficially for items that seem related to our goal. We don't simply ignore items unrelated to our goals; we often don't even notice them.
Further discussion
The perception bias is not only software matter but also life matter. A lot of things surround us but we only see what our eyes want to see. Otherwise, if you want to know what your friend see? listen to them, their words describe what they see.
Frozen - Madonna
"You only see what your eyes want to see.
How can life be what you want it to be..."
