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A Study Of the effectiveness of Manipulation on Perceptual Set

©Alex H Parker 2005

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Contents

Abstract Introduction Method Results Discussion References Appendices Debriefing

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Abstract

The aim of this experiment is to see if a perceptual set can influence perception of an ambiguous picture where the subject is either an old or young woman. A repeated measures design was used with a sample of 10 randomly selected participants. 80% of the participants were influenced to see a young woman when a ‘young’ perceptual set was induced and an old woman when an ‘old’ perceptual set was induced. The results support the hypothesis that perceptual set influences perception. Some factors related to resistances to perception of aged persons are discussed.

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Introduction

A person will experience through their senses information that needs to be interpreted by the brain. How a person interprets this information depends upon their previous experience of the stimulus and how it affected them. This package of ideas and experience is known as a schema. A schema will form a means of recognizing the nature of a new experience or define what is known as a perceptual set. Interpretation and selection of information is called perception. The senses that humans have are touch, smell, hearing, and vision. These senses are the only resources that a human has for experiencing their environment and these are the sources of the information that are interpreted to create a perception. People can have the same sensations in the same environment but interpret the information they receive through their senses differently . For example an event where a person raises their voice may be interpreted by one person as aggression, and as someone trying to be heard in a crowded room by another. What a person sees and notices is a caused by perceptual set. A mechanic may notice an old car and see smoke coming out the exhaust, and a young single man might notice a beautiful woman driving a car. Both the mechanic and the single man saw the same thing but their perception was different. This is a demonstration of perceptual set. According to Allport(1955) a set is ‘a perceptual bias or predisposition or readiness to perceive particular features of a stimulus.’ This means that a set is a temporary lowering or raising of our threshold for perceiving something. This includes what we choose to perceive and how we make sense of it. A set acts as a selector in the way that it only brings to our attention certain things that we experience by sensation. We are ready to perceive these selected things when it is most relevant to us. For example we hear our name in a noisy room but all other words are not noticed, we notice more airplanes when we are about to fly in one, and notice more cake shops when we are on a diet. Kelly performed an experiment where two groups of students where given a brief description of a speaker before being introduced. The descriptions were identical but one group had the word warm in the description and the other the word cold. The students were asked to rate the speakers performance after his speech. It was found that the students given the warm description viewed him as humorous and kinder and

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they also participated better in the class discussion with the speaker than the group given the cold description. The two conditions had given the two groups different perceptual sets. Their interaction during the lecture also suggested that the two groups had a positive or negative prejudice toward the speaker based upon their descriptions. ‘Solomon Asch’ termed the words warm and cold as ‘central traits’ ‘Luchins 1957’ suggested that What we experience through our senses first has the greatest effect on impression formation. He demonstrated in ‘the story of Jim’ that if a person is presented with a friendly or lonely part of a story first that this will have a strong effect on the perception the listener has about the character ‘Jim’. This is called ‘Primacy Effect.’ The aim of this study is to demonstrate that individuals can manipulate another person’s perception, by verbally inducing a perceptual set using ‘primacy effect’ and ‘Central traits.’ The experimental hypothesis is that, what people perceive (DV) in an ambiguous drawing can be controlled and altered by verbally manipulating perceptual set (IV). The null hypothesis is that there will be no relation between the presented words (IV) and what is perceived (DV).

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Method

I used a repeated measures design in this experiment, as it was necessary to use the same individuals for both conditions to see if perception can be manipulated. The independent variable is the ‘Central trait’ word and ‘stereotypical words’ presented to the participant. In the first condition, the words were from stereotypes of old age, in the second from stereotypes of youth. The dependant variable is the percentage of participants who: • perceive an old person in an ambiguous picture that could be seen as an old or young

person when their perceptual set is manipulated by ‘old’ words and who also • see a youth in an ambiguous picture that could be seen as an old or young person

when their perceptual set is manipulated by ‘young’ words. Participants Participants were obtained by random sampling. This was done by stopping 10 people at random in a busy local park (in a non-threatening manner) who were not with a dependent child or adult. This was to avoid extraneous variables that could interfere with the effect of the independent variable i.e. already have a strong set based upon their immediate circumstances. They were all aged over 18 to avoid the need for parental consent and to minimise any perceived threat. The same participants were used for both conditions; this was necessary, as their perception in both conditions will demonstrate if it is possible to manipulate human perception. The study was ethical because it respected the participants right to refuse to take part and They were told that the aim of the study clearly. Also the instructions were simple so as not to cause embarrassment and distress, and a debriefing was given after the experiment where the ambiguous pictures were explained and the participants were given the opportunity to ask questions to clarify their understanding of the experiment. The participants were asked to sign a consent form to show they agreed to participate. Materials Two similar 'old woman/young girl ambiguous pictures', which are not recognizably similar. It was necessary to use 2 versions of the picture to minimise demand characteristics – that is, the participant guessing what answer is required of them. A Table to record the results of what was perceived and the success of attempted manipulation upon perception.

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Procedure Participants did the experiment alone with the experimenter and were unlikely to know each other and explain to other participants what the experiment involved. It was explained to them that they would be given a description of a person and then be shown asked to identify the age of that person in a picture. The procedure was then repeated using the different description and another picture. 5 people were given the ‘old’ description first and 5 were given the ‘young’ description first. This was to counterbalance for order effects. ‘Condition A’ Old woman description To produce a primacy effect I started with the central trait word ‘Cold’ followed by descriptions that are stereotypical of old people (see appendix). The participants were then presented with the ambiguous old/young picture and asked the age group of the subject in the picture. Their answer was recorded. Condition B Young girl description The participants were then asked to listen to words describing another person that they were going to see a picture of and they were presented with a second list of words. To produce a Primacy effect for the new induced ‘set.’ The new list of words began with the central trait word ‘Warm’ followed by words stereotypically related to youth. The participants were then presented with the different design of the young/old picture and asked the age group of the subject, and their answer was recorded. Where there is no difference in perception the result is void and manipulation will have been unsuccessful.

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Results

The results have been put onto a table of percentages, even though there were not enough participants to fully justify this kind of presentation. However, this presentation may misrepresent the importance of this small-scale study and unreasonably generalise the results to the rest of society. It does however give credibility to further research. The raw data is in an appendix. The results demonstrated that it is possible to manipulate perception by introducing a perceptual set verbally. 8 out of 10 participants perceived an old woman in condition ‘A’, and were successfully manipulated to perceive a young girl in condition ‘B’. 2 out of 10 participants only saw a young girl and appeared to be unaffected by the stereotypical words and central traits. However the latter did have difficulty in perceiving anything at all and took longer to look at the pictures. Table: Success of introducing a temporary perceptual set and manipulating a new

‘set’ so that something else is perceived.

Percentage of participants Successfully manipulated 80

Not successful 20

Graph : A pie chart to show proportion of people

influenced by perceptual set to appropriately see an old or young woman

80

20

Set induced appropriateold/young perception

Set did not induceappropriate old/youngperception

The experimental hypothesis has been supported and the null hypothesis rejected.

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Discussion

The results appeared to support the experimental hypothesis, which asserted that peoples perceptual set can be induced verbally by another person, and that it can be altered again verbally so that the participant is in effect manipulated to perceive what the experimenter wants them to perceive. Eight out of ten people had a set successfully introduced that led them to see an old woman and were successfully manipulated to perceive a young girl. Only two out of ten people had did not respond to the induced set. The two people who did not respond to the introduced set had difficulty seeing ether the old woman or the young girl. This could have been as a result of some kind of cognitive impairment caused by illness, depression, alcohol, medication or other extraneous variables. I think that it is likely that the difficulty in perceiving anything at all could be evidence that the induced set was successful but the participant experienced what Freud called perceptual defense. Malcolm Hardy and Steve Heyes State in beginning psychology published by Oxford University press state: ‘Freud felt that the perceptual process contains systems which protect us from consciously perceiving information that might cause us cause us extreme upset.’ Eriksen called this theory the ‘The super-discriminating unconscious,’ which blocks perception if it is likely to be unpleasant. This appears to be an ‘anti perceptual set’ where the threshold for perceiving something is raised instead of lowered. I suggest that the words used in condition ‘A’ caused anticipation in the two participants of something unpleasant and that the ‘Old woman’ was perceived unconsciously by them, but perceptual defense prevented it from entering consciousness. The fact that the two participants eventually saw the young girl may have been a result of the amount of time they continued to study the ambiguous picture. Both participants expressed revulsion at the image of the old woman when the picture was explained and appeared moderately upset by it. I suggest the two participants reactions at having the old woman explained was further evidence of ‘perceptual defense.’ The other eight participants showed no emotion when they perceived the ‘Old woman.’ I t would be impossible to test a participant before the experiment to see if they are likely to have a perceptual defense against unpleasant words, this is because any test would involve inducing anxiety upon the participant and this would be unethical. I believe that the stereotypical words used should be changed to non-emotional words, as this will

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reduce the likelihood of distress, although this could reduce the effectiveness of the manipulation. In future experiments if I suspected that the participant is having difficulty in perceiving anything in the ambiguous picture I could assume that perceptual defense is active, and I would then tactfully end the experiment with that participant. I would also not explain the picture of the old woman and avoid what Freud called a Carthasis, which means bringing repressed emotions to consciousness. It is difficult to know what had the dominant influence on the other eight participants since the independent variable included stereotypical words, central traits and primacy effect. In future experiments I believe it would be effective to separate these three variables into separate experiments of the same nature to see which has the dominant effect. However, in this experiment not all participants started with condition ‘A’. This alternation of which condition is presented first should have reduced Perceptual Defense affect and may in the majority of cases had an effect upon perception after manipulating the perceptual set. In a future experiment the stimulus pictures should also be counterbalanced, since they may have influenced the results here. The amount of participants used was very low and it would be impossible to generalise the results to the rest of the population. I believe that doing the study with a small number of participants was effective in bringing credibility to further study and highlights ethical issues that may not have been given consideration if more participants were used. In a future study, many more participants would be used. The results of the study appear to suggest that people are susceptible to having their perceptions manipulated by people and organizations. This may be used to incite prejudice or appreciation to certain minorities’ political movements and commercial products. This study also seems to suggest that each human’s autonomy is fragile and that human perception may be a product of externally induced and manipulated perceptual set.

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References

Beginning Psychology by Malcolm Hardy and Steve Heyes, Fifth edition. Published by Oxford University press. 1999. ISBN 0-19-832821-4 Simply Psychology by Michael Eysenck. Published by Psychology Press1996. ISBN 0-86377-436-9 Psychology & you by David Hargreaves, Kevin Howells & Elizabeth Ockleford. Published byBPS Books 1997 ISBN 1-85433-226-0 101 key Ideas Psychology by Dave Robinson. Published by Hodder & Stoughton 2000 ISBN0-340-78155-6 GCSE Psychology by Mike Stanley & John Dickinson published by National Extension College trust ltd. 2001 ISBN 1-84308-083-4

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Appendices

Bellow data obtained from the study

Field study table results Participants in order

Condition One ‘old woman’ description What is perceived

Condition Two ‘Young Girl’ description What is Perceived

Success of Manipulation.

1 Old woman Young girl Achieved 2 Old woman Young girl Achieved 3 Young girl Young girl Void 4 Old woman Young girl Achieved 5 Young girl Young girl Void 6 Old woman Young girl Achieved 7 Old woman Young girl Achieved 8 Old woman Young girl Achieved 9 Old woman Young girl Achieved 10 Old woman Young girl Achieved

Stereotype word lists with central traits.

Condition ‘A’ word list

Condition ‘B’ word list

Cold (central Trait ) Warm (central Trait) Weak Playful Sick Joy Heating Laughing Coronation Street Pretty Bingo Flowers World war two Running Memories Princess Broomstick Cute Bitterness Flirty

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Ambiguous pictures used for condition ‘A’ and ‘B’

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Debriefing

Thank you, for assisting me with this experiment. The aim of this project has been to study perceptual set and how it can be used to alter people’s perceptions. The two pictures that you were shown are called ambiguous. This means that in both pictures you could see potentially 2 different pictures, either an old woman or a young girl. By presenting you with words that related to old people I hoped to condition you to see the old woman in the picture. The second set of words that I gave you, were designed to change your perception and result in you seeing a young girl in the second picture. I have included another 9 people in this study and will include your contribution be analyzing the results. I am happy to answer any questions you have regarding this experiment. The data that I have collected will be included in my project report for college, but if you request that your contribution is not included I will be happy to remove your data from my report. I will also give you a copy of my final report, if you would like to receive one.

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