\n\n“Most of the time, the story our brains generate matches the real, physical world \u2014 but not always. Our brains also unconsciously bend our perception of reality to meet our desires or expectations. And they fill in gaps using our past experiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All of this can bias us. Visual illusions present clear and interesting challenges for how we live: How do we know what\u2019s real? And once we know the extent of our brain\u2019s limits, how do we live with more humility \u2014 and think with greater care about our perceptions?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
…<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“The stories our brains tell us about reality are extremely compelling, even when they are wrong.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
…<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“\u201cThe dirty little secret about sensory systems is that they\u2019re slow, they\u2019re lagged, they\u2019re not about what\u2019s happening right now but what\u2019s happening 50 milliseconds ago, or, in the case for vision, hundreds of milliseconds ago,\u201d says Adam Hantman, a neuroscientist at Howard Hughes Medical Institute\u2019s Janelia Research Campus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If we relied solely on this outdated information, though, we wouldn\u2019t be able to hit baseballs with bats, or swat annoying flies away from our faces. We\u2019d be less coordinated, and possibly get hurt more often.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So the brain predicts the path of motion before it happens. It tells us a story about where the object is heading, and this story becomes our reality. That\u2019s what\u2019s likely happening with Cavanagh\u2019s illusion. It happens all the time.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
…<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“The brain tells us a story about the motion of objects. But that\u2019s not the only story it tells. It also tells us stories about more complicated aspects of our visual world, like color.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
…<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“When we think an object is being bathed in blue light, we can filter out that blue light intuitively. That\u2019s how many of these color illusions work. We use surrounding color cues and assumptions about lighting to guess an object\u2019s true color. Sometimes those guesses are wrong, and sometimes we make different assumptions from others.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
…<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Night owls, or people who like to go to bed really late and wake up later in the morning, are more likely to see the dress as black and blue. Larks, a.k.a. early risers, are more likely to see it as white and gold. What\u2019s going on?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wallisch believes the correlation is rooted in the life experience of being either a lark or a night owl. Larks, he hypothesizes, spend more time in daylight than night owls. They\u2019re more familiar with it. So when confronted with an ill–<\/strong>lit image like the dress, they are more likely to assume it is being bathed in bright sunlight, which has a lot of blue in it, Wallisch points out. As a result, their brains filter it out. \u201cIf you assume it\u2019s daylight, you will see it as white and gold. Because if you subtract blue, yellow is left,\u201d he says.” …<\/p>\n\n\n\n “The owls versus lark data seems quite compelling for explaining a large part of the individual differences,\u201d Schwarzkopf says. But not all of it. \u201cThere are still lots of other factors that must have a strong influence here.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n …<\/p>\n\n\n\n “we have no way of knowing how our experiences guide our perception. \u201cYour brain makes a lot of unconscious inferences, and it doesn\u2019t tell you that it\u2019s an inference,\u201d he explains. \u201cYou see whatever you see. Your brain doesn\u2019t tell you, \u2018I took into account how much daylight I\u2019ve seen in my life.\u2019\u201d”<\/p>\n\n\n\n …<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Sometimes, especially when the information we\u2019re receiving is unclear, we see what we want to see. In the past, researchers have found that even slight rewards can change the way people perceive objects.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n …<\/p>\n\n\n\n “In a more complex example<\/a>, Balcetis has found that when she tells study participants to pay attention to either an officer or a civilian in a video of a police altercation, it can change their perception of what happened (depending on their prior experience with law enforcement and the person in the video with whom they more closely identified). \u201cThat instruction changes what their eyes do,\u201d Balcetis told me last summer. \u201cAnd it leads them to a different understanding of the nature of the altercation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n You can\u2019t completely remove bias from the brain. \u201cYou can\u2019t change the fact that we\u2019ve all grown up in different worlds,\u201d Balcetis said. But you can encourage people to listen to other perspectives and be curious about the veracity of their own.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n …<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Just as we can look at an image and see things that aren\u2019t really there, we can look out into the world with skewed perceptions of reality. Political scientists and psychologists have long documented how political partisans perceive the facts of current events<\/a> differently depending on their political beliefs. The illusions and political thinking don\u2019t involve the same brain processes, but they follow the similar overarching way the brain works.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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