The world can be chaotic.
Cars whiz by on the road. People walk past you. There may be birds and planes flying
overhead. Despite all of this potential confusion, you manage to make sense of
most of what is happening around you.
The ability to comprehend the world reflects an interaction between the
things you see around you and your beliefs about the world.
An interesting question is the degree to which your beliefs
influence what you are seeing in the moment.
This question was explored by Christos Bechlivanidis and David Lagnado
in a fascinating paper in the August, 2013 issue of Psychological Science.
They created a simple computer-based environment in which
basic shapes (like squares and rectangles) could move and influence each
other. By playing with the environment
for a while, participants could learn how the various objects worked. For example, when a green square collided
with a barrier, it caused the red rectangle to become a star. The blue square would only allow squares, but
not other shapes to enter its borders.
So, in order to get the red rectangle inside the blue square, the green
square had to collide with the barrier first.
In one study, some participants were given a series of
exercises in this computer environment so that they learned how the objects
acted. Eventually, they learned how to
get the red rectangle inside the blue square.
A second group got no training.
Afterward, participants saw a video of the objects moving in
the world. In this video, the red
rectangle entered the blue square about 100 milliseconds before the green
square hit the platform. The red
rectangle turned into a star after the green square hit the platform. All of this happened in the same spatial
position, so that participants could see all of the objects without having to
move their eyes.
The participants then described the order of events in the
test video and gave information about why the events happened in that
order. Those who received no training
generally saw the events happen in the order in which they happened in the
video. They recognized that the red
rectangle turned into a square before the green square hit the platform and
that the rectangle became a star after it entered the blue square. When asked, they said that this was the order
they saw the events.
The participants who received training were much more prone
to describe the events in the order that fit with their training. They reported that the green square hit the
platform before the rectangle turned into a star, and that the rectangle turned
into a star before it entered the blue square.
They were also likely to say that this ordering happened, because that
reflects the way the environment works.
At one level, it should not be surprising that we have to
use a lot of conceptual knowledge to help us make sense of what happens in the
world. Causal relationships do not often
change that quickly, and so it is valuable (most of the time) for our beliefs
to influence our interpretation of what we see.
However, this influence of belief on behavior can be a
problem in situations like eyewitness testimony. It is well known that the reports of
eyewitnesses are not that reliable. If
people perceive events in a way that is consistent with how they believe that
the world works, then their reports of the order of events in a complex
situation may be wrong. Because groups
of people are likely to share causal beliefs, even entire groups may see events
in the wrong order, so having multiple witnesses who provide corroborating
testimony about the order of events does not necessarily mean that the events
happened in that order.
