The one about how your mind easily tricks you
The one about how your mind easily tricks you
Notes and thoughts about Introduction To Psychology MIT
Recent watch: YouTube, Introduction To Psychology MIT, Lecture 1. Introduction To Psychology MIT, Lecture 1.
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 thoughts and feelings. 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.
What we hear
McGurk Effect
Link to the relevant part of the lecture.
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.
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 lecture.
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."