My mind isn’t blown — it’s actually kind of comforting in a told-you-so kind of way. Or rather told-me-so. I’ve been an amateur student of biases for years. As such, I’ve been more than averagely aware of some of the sources of my systematic mistakes. And yet I continue to repeat them. I’ve long theorised that this is because biases are formed much deeper in our mental subsystems than the conscious top layer. Nice to be able to point to some proof! Thank you for highlighting it.
Well, remember that the act of seeing is a subconscious process in your brain. What makes this stuff fascinating is that the bias isn't even created in the brain...
What am i missing? How remarkable is it that the brain is biased (or 'trained') after the first round? Then in the second round the eye sees a familiar pattern and the organism (to use language from the study) immediately repeats behaviour that it relates to first round success. That's evolutionary explainable, isn't it?
1-0 for capitalism btw:
‘Yet, in the second round with the variable scoring system, participants unconsciously adjusted their perceptions to score as many points as possible. In a sense, their accuracy improved as the stakes improved.’
What you are missing is that it isn't the brain that does the information processing. The brain could be completely unbiased yet the reaction would still be biased because the eye itself encodes informati9n in a biased way (i.e. the retina decides which information gets to be sent to the brain, not the brain itself).
'The brain could be completely unbiased'. I don't get that from your summary nor from the study. The brain was trained in these experiments during the first round, no? In't the conclusion from this study that the eye is primed during the first round of the experiment and then selects information based on that during follow up rounds? The alternative to that says that the retina decides (solely) and thus 'thinks'. Do you want to go that far?
'(i.e. the retina decides which information gets to be sent to the brain, not the brain itself)'
On digesting or even noticing events by eyes & brains: i'm not sure if it's related but this has me think of that famous experiment where researchers run a man in a gorilla suit through a group of dancers. Most people who view the video and were asked afterward hadn't seen the gorilla, so absorbed they were by the dancers.
Well, if you read the study, the retina is making the decision which signal to code. So, in a sense the retina is "thinking", which is why this study is so important. This is by the way also expressed in statements by the universities where the research was conducted.
The question is if one can call the selective encoding the retina engages in "thinking". I would say no, I would call it filtering based on training.
Fascinating! I wonder if there is any connection to our tendency to look upward while trying to retrieve memories.
“When I try to remember or reflect, the (eye) movements in question, instead of being directed toward the periphery, seem to come from the periphery inward and feel like a sort of withdrawal from the outer world. As far as I can detect, these feelings are due to an actual rolling outward and upward of the eyeballs, such as I believe occurs in me in sleep, and is the exact opposite of their action in fixating a physical thing.” William James,The Principles of Psychology 1890.
This also reminds me of the research done on second languages and processing information , while using a second language, reduces emotional responses to stimuli: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33675396/
My mind isn’t blown — it’s actually kind of comforting in a told-you-so kind of way. Or rather told-me-so. I’ve been an amateur student of biases for years. As such, I’ve been more than averagely aware of some of the sources of my systematic mistakes. And yet I continue to repeat them. I’ve long theorised that this is because biases are formed much deeper in our mental subsystems than the conscious top layer. Nice to be able to point to some proof! Thank you for highlighting it.
Well, remember that the act of seeing is a subconscious process in your brain. What makes this stuff fascinating is that the bias isn't even created in the brain...
What am i missing? How remarkable is it that the brain is biased (or 'trained') after the first round? Then in the second round the eye sees a familiar pattern and the organism (to use language from the study) immediately repeats behaviour that it relates to first round success. That's evolutionary explainable, isn't it?
1-0 for capitalism btw:
‘Yet, in the second round with the variable scoring system, participants unconsciously adjusted their perceptions to score as many points as possible. In a sense, their accuracy improved as the stakes improved.’
(Or for 'optimal' tax rates...)
What you are missing is that it isn't the brain that does the information processing. The brain could be completely unbiased yet the reaction would still be biased because the eye itself encodes informati9n in a biased way (i.e. the retina decides which information gets to be sent to the brain, not the brain itself).
'The brain could be completely unbiased'. I don't get that from your summary nor from the study. The brain was trained in these experiments during the first round, no? In't the conclusion from this study that the eye is primed during the first round of the experiment and then selects information based on that during follow up rounds? The alternative to that says that the retina decides (solely) and thus 'thinks'. Do you want to go that far?
'(i.e. the retina decides which information gets to be sent to the brain, not the brain itself)'
On digesting or even noticing events by eyes & brains: i'm not sure if it's related but this has me think of that famous experiment where researchers run a man in a gorilla suit through a group of dancers. Most people who view the video and were asked afterward hadn't seen the gorilla, so absorbed they were by the dancers.
Well, if you read the study, the retina is making the decision which signal to code. So, in a sense the retina is "thinking", which is why this study is so important. This is by the way also expressed in statements by the universities where the research was conducted.
The question is if one can call the selective encoding the retina engages in "thinking". I would say no, I would call it filtering based on training.
The Duchess knew it in the 19th century already: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. 😜
Fascinating! I wonder if there is any connection to our tendency to look upward while trying to retrieve memories.
“When I try to remember or reflect, the (eye) movements in question, instead of being directed toward the periphery, seem to come from the periphery inward and feel like a sort of withdrawal from the outer world. As far as I can detect, these feelings are due to an actual rolling outward and upward of the eyeballs, such as I believe occurs in me in sleep, and is the exact opposite of their action in fixating a physical thing.” William James,The Principles of Psychology 1890.
This also reminds me of the research done on second languages and processing information , while using a second language, reduces emotional responses to stimuli: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33675396/