OOTB's Political Thread . ..
- By joeydavid
- Out of the Blue
- 69047 Replies
Thought this was interesting. It's nothing new in terms of the psychology behind it, but I think it speaks volumes to the idea of our perceptions and what we perceive. Those that hate Trump will judge a situation with that mentality. Those that support him will also judge with that mentality. It helps explain why people can see the exact same thing so very differently. It even helps to explain things like why certain posters here tend to cry racism when none exists or why there actually is racism and someone just doesn't see it.
So what they did in this experiment was take participants and gave them facial "scars" through the use of makeup. They told them that they were then going to interact with others so that it could be determined if the existence of the scar was held against them in some aspect by the other persons. They showed the participants their "scars" using a mirror and then told the participants that they needed to "touch up" or moisturize the scars. In actuality, they completely removed the scars such that the participants merely believed they had scars on their face but were completely blemish free.
They then participated in social interactions. Incredibly, despite having no scars whatsoever, the participants reported back that they were treated differently, felt stigmatized, and even quoted statements made about them in reference to the scarring. This particular study was done in 1980 and called the Dartmouth Scar Experiment. But there are others that confirm the same result and that is this: what we see and experience can be largely impacted and influenced by what we expect to see or anticipate will happen. We should all try to remember this phenomenon when forming our opinions as we are all victims of our individual perspectives.
Here's one link discussing some of the different studies:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/theory-of-knowledge/202311/what-you-see-is-what-you-look-for
That's just how cults work.