Your Mind Is Easily Tricked
A practical guide about how useful and how deceiving our minds can be.
Recent watch: YouTube, Introduction To Psychology MIT, Lecture 1
YouTubeLec 1 | MIT 9.00SC Introduction to Psychology, Spring 2011Video by MIT OpenCourseWare.. Introduction To Psychology MIT, Lecture 1
MIT OpenCourseWareIntroduction | Introduction to Psychology | Brain and Cognitive Sciences | MIT OpenCourseWareMIT OpenCourseWare is a web based publication of virtually all MIT course content. OCW is open and available to the world and is a permanent MIT activity.
Fascinating topic. Practical guide about how useful and how deceiving our minds can be. This lecture gives a few scientific (empirical) proofs of "we become what we think."
Things we think are objective in front of our eyes are determined by inferences and deductions that our mind makes, weighing sources of evidence in the world.
The simplest, most obvious things are interpretations of the world around us at many different levels of thought and feeling. That determines the world we see, experience, and act upon.
What we see
Memory Of A Picture
A simple experiment that shows that people's expectations influence their interpretation of the world (in this case, a picture.)
The audience is divided into two groups: A & B. They are shown the same picture.
Group A is presented with the following message: You will look briefly at a picture and answer some questions about it. The picture is a rough sketch of "X." Do not dwell on the picture. Look at it long enough "to take it all in" once. After that, you will answer "yes" or "no" to a series of questions.
Group B is presented with the same message from above, but the explanation of the picture would be different.
Both groups will be asked the same questions, and the answers will differ.
Checker shadow illusion
The checker shadow illusion is an optical illusion published by Edward H. Adelson, professor of vision science at MIT, in 1995.
The image depicts a checkerboard with light and dark squares, partly shadowed by another object. The optical illusion is that the area labelled A appears to be a darker colour than the area labelled B. However, within the context of the two-dimensional image, they are of identical brightness, i.e., they would be printed with identical mixtures of ink or displayed on a screen with pixels of identical colour.
Image courtesy of Wikipedia
wikipedia.orgWikipedia, the free encyclopediaWikipedia is a free online encyclopedia, created and edited by volunteers around the world and hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation..
What we hear
McGurk Effect
Link to the relevant part of the lectureYouTubeLec 1 | MIT 9.00SC Introduction to Psychology, Spring 2011Video by MIT OpenCourseWare..
Most adults think they hear "DA DA DA". The person in the video says, "BA BA BA." Audio recording says, "GA GA GA."
What we know
Link to the relevant part of the lecture.YouTubeLec 1 | MIT 9.00SC Introduction to Psychology, Spring 2011Video by MIT OpenCourseWare.
Our mental map is different from the actual map. Answer the following (without looking at the map):
- Which is farther east: San Diego, CA or Reno, NV?
- What's further north: Portland or Toronto?
An experiment about racism in Canada. Link to the relevant part of the lectureYouTubeLec 1 | MIT 9.00SC Introduction to Psychology, Spring 2011Video by MIT OpenCourseWare..
The "values that a person thinks they would have" and the "values that are responded to on the spot" are not the same, which leads to "I should have said this" or "I should have done that."