People’s consciousness is the most complicated and strange part of science which is studied constantly but the secret how it works is not decided yet. Scientists continue to provide different experiments in order to understand how it functions and how many secrets it comprises. People usually do not notice how actions they do and the things they see influence their world perception. Such experiment may be introduced on the example of the concept of a perceptual set. The experiment, we are going to provide, is going to illustrate how people’s perception of some things influence their perceptions of the others.
It is better to start with describing the notion of perceptional set. Personal set is “a state of readiness to perceive certain kinds of stimuli rather than others” (Hayes, 2000, p. 61). A good example is introduced in the book by Nevid, who shows that people who saw letters before saw in B letter B, and those who saw numbers were sure to see 13 (Nevid, 2008). The experiment, which is going to be conducted by us proofs the concept of perception set by contradiction.
The main idea of the experiment is as follows. Three friends of mine were invited in the room, which was unfamiliar for them, and their task was to observe the room and pay attention to the objects of blue color. One minute was given for them to observe the room and then their eyes were tied. Before the experiment my friends were told that they should do what they would be said. To the point, my friends tried to remember as much blue objects as they could as they thought that the main idea of the experiment was to evaluate their memory, and it was really a surprise, when they were asked to name the green objects which were in the room.
The results of the experiment showed that my friends were ready to tell about blue objects, but it was really hard for them to tell about green one. But still my friends managed to remember the green objects which size was big of the number was numerous or which just strike attention, such as a wedding photo in a green frame, a big floor vase with flowers, 10 green glasses on the table with a jug. Such objects as green children’s van, a small napkin on the TV-set, green shoes and a lot of other subjects were left behind the scope of their attention. The imagination of my friends tried to recollect the other objects and sometimes they just imagine what green could be in that room.
He experiment was conducted exactly as it was expected. The results were even better than I thought, as my friends managed to recollect some objects of green color in the room. Understanding that my reaction to the situation would have been the same, the results did not surprise me, as when people are asked to pay attention to concrete types of objects, their consciousness is unready to percept the other things.
This experiment showed that people are ready to percept the object which they are asked, at the same time how the perception of the other is not so important, so people’s consciousness does not try to do this and as a result, people cannot remember small things of the object they are not asked, while big are remembered as they strike attention in any way.
Reference List
Hayes, N. (2000). Foundations of psychology. Cengage Learning EMEA.
Nevid J. S. (2008). Psychology: Concepts and Applications. Cengage Learning.