Media Influences Perception of Dreams

"Oriental Dream," Jean Lecomte du Nouy, 1904.

We know we can’t always trust our perceptions of the reality that surrounds us, but you’d think we’d at least be able to accurately perceive our inner reality. Not so, according to a philosophy professor who contends recall of our dreams is influenced by the mass media. While the information for this post is a couple of years old, I still want to mention it because it’s of interest to anyone who is curious about how we perceive the world, inner as well as outer.

In a paper entitled “Why Did We Think We Dreamed in Black and White?” University of California philosophy professor Eric Schwitzgebel documented many instances in the 1950s when people said their dreams were only black and white. However, other notable testimony going back into history and since the 50s points to dreams being in color.

Media Influences Perception

So why did people think they dreamed in black and white? Schwitzgebel says it was because the visual media of the 1950s ~ films and early television ~ were in black and white, which influenced people’s recall.

"If our opinions about basic features of our dreams can change with changes in technology, it seems to follow that our knowledge of our own dreams is much less secure than we might at first have thought it to be," he said.

Schwitzgebel bases his theory on reports of dreams through history and how people describe the look of their dreams. From the dream studies of Descartes and Freud to modern surveys on dreams through America Online, it appears that our perception has changed over time.

Other Experiences Also Suspect

"I’m interested in our knowledge of our own conscious experience," Schwitzgebel told ScienceDaily. " I advocate the view that we don't know our own experiences nearly as well as we think we do. I have advocated this position not only for dreams, but also for auditory experience and for visual imagery."

He said images seen in peripheral vision are often inaccurate, because our best information comes from what is directly in our focus, a rather narrow band spot directly in front of our eyes. We are also picking up clues about our environment through hearing sound waves reflect off of objects, a bat-like "echolocation" that may be more common in humans than we usually acknowledge.

Click here for the ScienceDaily article.
Click here for Prof. Schwitzgebel’s paper.

Meditation Can Alter Neural Perception

Researchers have found evidence that skills developed by Tibetan Buddhist monks in their practice of a certain type of meditation strongly influences their experience of "perceptual rivalry," dealing with attention and consciousness.

Perceptual rivalry arises when two different images are presented to each eye, and it is manifested as a fluctuation ~ typically over the course of seconds ~ in the "dominant" image that is consciously perceived. The neural events underlying perceptual rivalry are not well understood but are thought to involve brain mechanisms that regulate attention and conscious awareness.

Some previous work had suggested that skilled meditators can alter certain aspects of their brain's neural activity. To gain insight into how visual perception is regulated within the brain, researchers in the new study chose to investigate the extent to which certain types of trained meditative practice can influence the conscious experience of visual perceptual rivalry.

With the support of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, 76 Tibetan Buddhist monks participated in the study, which was carried out at or near their mountain retreats in the Himalaya, Zanskar, and Ladakhi Ranges of India. The monks possessed meditative training ranging from 5 to 54 years.

Two Types of Meditation

The researchers tested the experience of visual rivalry by monks during the practice of two types of meditation:

• “Compassion"-oriented meditation, described as a contemplation of suffering within the world combined with an emanation of loving kindness.

• “One-point" meditation, described as the maintained focus of attention on a single object or thought, a focus that leads to a stability and clarity of mind.

Whereas no observable change in the rate of "visual switching" during rivalry was seen in monks practicing compassion meditation, major increases in the durations of perceptual dominance were experienced by monks practicing one-point meditation.

Within this group, three monks reported complete visual stability during the entire five-minute meditation period. Increases in duration of perceptual dominance were also seen in other monks after a period of one-point meditation.

Click here for the complete Medical News Today article.

Beware of Hnegripitrom!

In a new study reported in Psychological Science, a group of students were given a list of made-up food additives and were asked to rate how harmful they were. The additives all contained 12 letters, with "Magnalroxate" being one of the easiest to pronounce and "Hnegripitrom" one of the hardest.

• The students consistently rated the difficult-to-pronounce additives as being more harmful.
• In addition, the hard-to-pronounce additives were considered to be more novel than those with easier names.

In another experiment, students were shown a list of made-up names of amusement-park rides and were asked to rate the rides on how adventurous they would be and how risky ~ and therefore most likely to make them sick ~ the rides would be. The names ranged from being easy to pronounce, such as “Chunta,” to very difficult to pronounce, such as “Vaiveahtoishi.”

• Consistent with the first experiment, the students rated the rides with the difficult-to-pronounce names as being more risky, but also more exciting.

The findings also suggest that risk perception may be influenced by the way the items are presented. If they are difficult to process ~ such as hard-to-pronounce names ~ they will be viewed as being inherently riskier.

Click here for the complete article in Science Daily.

Mirror, Mirror, On the Wall . . .

Venus at a Mirror by Peter Paul Rubens, 1615: The Venus Effect

A new study on mirrors concludes that people cannot always relate spatially to mirrors. They think their image should be visible, even when it is impossible due to the viewer’s location. The other study says that our perceptions of our appearance can be dramatically altered by the mirror.

Dr Marco Bertamini, from the University of Liverpool School of Psychology conducted a number of experiments by covering a mirror on a wall and inviting participants to walk along a line parallel to the mirror. He asked them to guess the point at which they would be able to see their reflection. Results showed that people believe they can see themselves even before they are level with the near edge of the mirror.

"People tend not to understand that the location of the viewer matters in terms of what is visible in a mirror,” Bertamini says. “A good example of this is what we call the Venus Effect, which relates to the many famous paintings of the goddess Venus, looking in a small mirror. If you were to look at these paintings, you would assume that Venus is admiring her own face, because you see her face in the mirror. Your viewpoint, however, is rather different from hers; if you can see her in the mirror then she would see you in the mirror."

Click here for more about the Venus Effect study.

We See What We Want to See

“It's like you weren’t even at the same meeting I was.”

Every so often during my years as a journalist I’d get phone calls from angry readers questioning what I’d written. Other readers of the same articles would congratulate me on having such accurate perceptions.

Before long I became convinced we all live in our separate and personal realities.

That’s why I’m looking forward to a new book by Farhad Manjoo called True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society, where he discusses how as humans we see what we want to see. His overall contention, apparently, is that things are getting even murkier in this digital age.

In his Salon.com column today, Manjoo describes 9/11 film footage of Flight 175 as it approaches the World Trade Center. This very footage is vital evidence for a large group of conspiracy theorists who plainly see a missile being launched from the plane and striking the WTC tower shortly before the plane itself smashes into it. So far “official” investigators, however, have not seen the missile (nor does Manjoo, he admits) while viewing the same footage.

The same situation occurs after 45 years of analyzing the Zapruder footage of bullets blowing apart John F. Kennedy’s skull. Some people see proof of multiple assassins on the "grassy knoll" and others only see proof of Oswald as the lone killer.

This phenomenon is known as “selective perception” and was studied nearly 50 years ago by two social scientists, Albert Hastorf and Hadley Cantril. They showed footage of a Dartmouth football game against Princeton to groups of students from both colleges and told the students to document all infractions they saw. Each side perceived a completely different game – the Dartmouth students listed numerous infractions by Princeton players and few by their own team, while Princeton students did the opposite.

Hastorf and Cantril concluded that the key was the fact that the game – like many other things in our lives – was really just organized chaos. So much was happening at once that viewers were forced to construct reality by assembling pieces of the action into a coherent whole.

“Think about a schoolyard at recess, a baseball game, a political debate,” Majoo writes in his column. “Think about a confrontation at sea, a presidential assassination, a terrorist attack. Or just think about all that happened to you yesterday: Every ‘thing’ that occurs is really a million smaller things involving a million people. But which of the million things, and which of the million people, do we notice? And which do we overlook?”

I see what my brain wants to see, and you see what your brain wants to see.

Honestly, that’s one of the reasons I decided to leave journalism. I realized my best efforts at capturing objective truth were being sifted through my brain’s “reality” filter and that my irate critics and supporters alike were also just being true to their own perceived realities. There just wasn't enough perceptual middle ground for a firm footing.

(And it's not just the sense of sight. I recall years ago playing a Beatles album backwards on the turntable – the what?? – to hear the “Paul is dead” message heard by millions who became convinced we were one Beatle short of a full band. But all I heard was “rrrrraahhh-ehhhrraaahaaa” and was greatly relieved when John Lennon later confirmed that Paul was alive and there was no message embedded there at all. Whew.)