What you can do affects what you see.

I like to run.  It is very peaceful to go for a nice long run on a beautiful sunny day.  There are days when I feel like I can run forever.  My legs just keep moving.  On those days, I fix my eyes on a point in the distance and before I know it I am passing what I was looking at.  Other days, of course, I feel like I’m running in Jell-O.  On those days, the end of the block looks like it is a million miles away.

Of course, that must just be a metaphor, right?

Actually, there is growing evidence that what you are able to do with your body at any given time affects what you see.  A nice example of this work comes from a paper by Sally Linkenauger, Jessica Witt, Jeanine Stefanucci, Jonathan Bakdash, and Dennis Proffitt in the December, 2009 issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychology:  Human Perception and Performance. 

They had people sit at a table and judge the distance between them and a tool that was placed somewhere on the table.  For example, in one study, right-handed people sat at a table and a hammer was placed on the table.  They were to imagine picking up the hammer from the table.  On each trial of the experiment, the hammer was placed some distance away from them.  Then, they had to judge the distance between them and the hammer.  To make this judgment, the experiment who was sitting across from them opened up a tape measure (with the numbers facing away from the participant).  The participant directed the experimenter to lengthen or shorten the exposed ruler until they thought it was the same length as the distance from them to the hammer.

Now here’s the interesting part.  On some trials, the hammer was placed with the handle facing to the right, so that it would be easy to pick up the hammer by just reaching straight out for it.  On other trials, the hammer was placed with the handle facing to the left.  In order to pick up the hammer on these trials, people had to imagine reaching and turning their hand over to grasp the hammer normally.  This movement is awkward.  So, the hammer would be easier to pick up when it was on the right than when it was on the left.

When the hammer was placed so that it would be easy to grasp, people systematically judged the distances to be shorter than when the hammer was oriented so that it would be hard to grasp.  That is, the ease of picking up the hammer affected people’s judgments of how far away the hammer was in space.

Interestingly, left-handed people did not show the same pattern of data.  The left-handers judged the tool to be the same distance away regardless of whether it was oriented in a way that would make it easy to grasp or hard to grasp.  The authors point out that left-handers are usually more ambidextrous than right-handers, and so even though they were asked to imagine picking up the hammer with their left hand only, they may still perceive objects as if they will be grasped in a natural way regardless of how they are oriented.

Finally, I should point out that Dennis Proffitt and his colleagues have done a number of studies of the effects of actions on perception.  For example, they also find that people judge hills to be steeper when they are tired or weighed down by carrying a heavy backpack than when they are not.

These findings make clear that our visual system does not just give us a true picture of what is out there in the world.  Instead, the human visual system provides information that is useful for acting on the world.  It might take us a long time to reason through how likely we are to succeed at climbing a hill or running a distance or picking up a heavy tool.  By biasing our judgments of distance and steepness, though, our visual systems provide us with information that is available quickly and gives us a way of estimating whether we will succeed at a course of action.   

Dream Global, Act Local

When you want to motivate someone to do something, you tell them to Dream Big, and to Reach for the Stars.  That is, of course, important advice.  It is hard to achieve greatness without ever dreaming of greatness.  An important question, though, is how you should go about achieving that greatness after you have dreamed it?

An interesting study in the November, 2008 issue of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin by Linda Houser-Marko and Kennon Sheldon sheds some light on that question.  They point out that there is lots of previous research (much of it by Dan Wegner and Robin Vallacher) that points out that people are able to identify the actions they are carrying out at a variety of different levels of generality. For example, imagine that you are talking on the phone in order to ask your friend whether you can borrow her car.  If someone stopped you in the middle of the conversation and asked you what you were doing, you could say “begging for a car,” or perhaps “asking a question” or even “speaking into the phone.”  The first of these is a very general statement of what you are doing.  The last of these is a very specific action that is part of the more general action of begging for a car. 

When you dream big, you are usually thinking about a grand and general action.  You might want to become a great musician, get a good grade in a class, or perhaps get a rewarding job, or even make the world a safer place.  To carry out any of these big goals, you also need to carry out a series of smaller steps.  For example, getting an A in a class might require studying a certain number of hours each week, or practicing skills from the class, or spending an amount of time writing.

When you are in the process of trying to achieve a big goal, how should you think about your actions?

Houser-Marko and Sheldon’s data suggest that you should focus on the specific actions that are part of the broader goal.  The reason why you should focus on actions, is that you may sometimes fail along the way toward trying to achieve the broader goal.  For example, if you want to get an A in the class, you might set the goal of studying at least 10 hours a week for the class.  Imagine you have a difficult week, or perhaps a strong temptation comes up.  You might study only 6 hours for the class in one week.  If you focus on the general goal of getting an A, then you will feel worse about this failure than if you focus just on the local goal of studying for 10 hours.  The idea is that small failures along the way are more likely to be seen as chipping away at the possibility that you will achieve the broader goal when you focus only on that general goal than if you focus on the specific actions.  If you start to feel bad about your prospects for success at the larger goal, you may give up altogether. 

So, these findings suggest that when you dream, you should dream globally.  Set your sights on high achievement.  But when it comes time to actually achieve your goal, act locally.  Find specific actions that will bring you toward your goal. Even if you stumble on the way to the goal, if you focus on the specific actions, you will not see your failure as a sign that you will not succeed at your dreams.