Seeing the Expected, the Desired, and the Feared: Influences on Perceptual Interpretation and Directed Attention

Abstract

Though people often believe their visual experiences reflect the objective state of the surrounding world, a wealth of recent evidence suggests that perceptions are systematically biased. We draw from contemporary research and supplement with real world anecdotes to suggest that two aspects of perception are subject to influence by states internal to perceivers themselves. We focus on the biases that arise from two difficult tasks faced by the visual system. First, visual information is often unclear and ambiguous; yet visual input must be categorized quickly and efficiently. Second, people can focus on only a subset of perceptual information at once, and as a result visual attention is necessarily directed at a subset of the surrounding world. We document ways in which expectations, desires, and fears help to resolve perceptual ambiguity and direct attention. Finally, we discuss the functional nature of visual biases and note potential consequences in important domains.Is it a gun? Is it a knife? Is it in your heart? Is it in your eyes? -Bruce Springsteen, "American Skin (41 Shots)" On July 22, 2005, the Metropolitan Police of Greater London were searching for suspects wanted in relation to four attempted bombings carried out the previous day. The police had leads. They found a gym membership card inside one of the bombers' bags and obtained grainy photographs of the suspects from closed-circuit cameras. From this, they guessed that the three suspects in question were of Somali, Eritrean, or Ethiopian descent, narrowed their search to the neighborhood of Tulse Hill, and set up surveillance on a suspected apartment block. The morning of the stakeout, Jean Charles de Menezes, a Brazilian electrician living on the block, left his home for work. An officer on surveillance duty compared the foreign features of Menezes' face to those seen in the photographs. Surreptitious pursuit of Menezes ensued. At the Stockwell Underground Station, Menezes took a seat on a train for his commute to work. Undercover officers tackled and shot Menezes seven times in the head at point-blank range. Menezes, a male, foreign in appearance, and coming from the same building that officers expected the suspects to reside, shared no other similarities to the terrorists and was entirely innocent.The story of this tragedy sounds like many others: Amadou Diallo, Trayvon Martin, Patrick Dorismond, Ousmane Zongo, Tim Stansbury, Sean Bell, Oscar Grant, and Ramarley Graham. These tragedies repeatedly raise questions about how people mistakenly see what seems so plainly visible to others. How was a Brazilian electrician mistaken for an African terrorist? How was Amadou Diallo's wallet misperceived as a gun? In this article, we discuss the psychological research that may suggest possible reasons they occurred.In addition to these tragic examples, we also discuss instances of more positive perceptual biases. At times, people see the world around them in a way that is more favorable than it might appear under different circumstances. When a woman looks ...

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