The precise circumstances surrounding the death in Minneapolis of Renee Nicole Good continue to be passionately debated across the world, with wildly different interpretations of the shocking images.
Millions of people are examining the exact same video feed, and yet many insist on opposite conclusions.
How is this possible?
Is it just politics? Do we merely see what we want to? Or could there be some deeper psychological issue manifesting?
Our visual perception is indeed much less reliable than we realise. Might this resolve the conundrum of how we can all view the same material, yet in fact see entirely different things?
Psychology Experiments Reveal How to See Perception
Psychologists’ experiments surprise and challenge us, revealing dangerous overconfidence in what we believe we saw.
In one famous early study, subjects viewed films of car accidents, and were then asked about what they witnessed, just as people are questioning now, what they saw in Minnesota.
But if the inquiry was posed as “About how fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?” this elicited a significantly higher perception of speed in the answers than when the question was framed as “About how fast were the cars going when they hit each other?” On a retest one week later, those subjects who were asked about smashed cars were more likely to respond “yes” to the question “Did you see any broken glass?” even though broken glass did not exist in the accident.
Changing just one word in an apparently innocent question significantly alters what witnesses think they see. We are very suggestible and can be manipulated into believing we saw something that never existed, surprisingly easily.
Perhaps this precise psychological effect is even happening right now, in newsroom studios across the nation, as the issue is hotly debated, using emotive language.
Our Focus Is More Selective Than We Realise
But not only can we be profoundly influenced in how we see the world in ways below our conscious awareness, but our focus can also be much more selective than we realise, meaning we can still completely miss an event or object, even if it’s extremely distinct and right in front of us.
We think the various participants in the Minnesota incident must have seen certain obvious things, but did they?
For example, in another now-famous experiment, you watch a video in which a group of actors is playing a ball-tossing game, and you are invited to count the number of times the players toss the ball.
But you become so focused on counting the passes that you completely miss a variety of strange events that also occur, slap bang in the middle of the game, and therefore right in your field of view.
In one version of the experiment, about 50 percent of participants completely missed an actor dressed in a gorilla costume walk into the middle of the scene, turn to the viewers, beat his chest, and then walk off.
In another study, pedestrians did not notice money hanging from a tree directly in their path, even when they had to change their route to walk around the money.
Participants even miss a staged fight occurring in plain sight within 10 yards of them.
In another scientific demonstration, an initial experimenter approaches a participant on the street and seeks directions to a nearby place. During the conversation, two other experimenters carrying a door insolently butt between the first experimenter and the participant. While the participant’s view becomes briefly shielded, one of the experimenters carrying the door trades places with the experimenter who had started the conversation, staying behind to complete it, thus completely swapping persons.
In this experiment, fully 50 percent of participants failed to detect the substitution of one conversation partner for the other.
Our visual attention appears strongly selective. Much more than we realise, our awareness at any one moment is actually of only a specific, often very limited portion of the visual world.
The Role of Unconscious Transference and Change Blindness
Yet other psychological processes beyond highly selective focus may be involved in the Minnesota incident, and one is referred to as “unconscious transference.” This involves a widespread tendency to become confused over who is guilty and who is innocent if both parties are mingling in the same scene.
These studies include videos of shoplifting incidents: Blameless parties browsing products down a supermarket’s liquor aisle disappear behind a tall pile of boxes, but then a different person, the actual perpetrator, walks out from behind the stack and similarly browses the products for a few minutes before brazenly shoplifting a bottle of wine and strolling off-screen. The camera view switches, showing the perpetrator sauntering out of the store.
After viewing the video, participants were asked to identify the perpetrator from a six-person lineup that included the perpetrator, innocent parties from the video, and three other people.
Most participants failed to detect the change behind the pile of boxes, exhibiting what is referred to as “change blindness,” resulting in an innocent person being misidentified in the post-video lineup. The misidentifying participants tended to choose one of the innocent parties from the video, exhibiting “unconscious transference.”
This might be relevant to law-enforcement officials arriving at a scene comprising “guilty” and “innocent” participants.
This leads on to another direct psychological challenge presented by the various clips of video of the Minneapolis incident, which is beyond what we see: What about the perspective of the participants who were there in the actual scene, like the victim and the officials?
The Role of Metacognition
Most people engaging in the argument over exactly what happened appear to also be making key assumptions about what viewers of the video are now witnessing and also precisely what those in the actual scene were aware of at the time.
For example, while we can maybe see the entirety of the car, or the street, or various officers or pedestrians, in various clips, and we get a chance to see the clips again and again, what were the actual participants involved aware of for themselves, for split seconds, of what was going on around and in front of them?
Psychology of perception teaches us that often what we are convinced we saw didn’t actually happen as we think it did.
But also beyond our own view, what we believe others should have perceived as obvious is often not what they did indeed witness.
This is referred to in the field as “metacognition,” which is what we think others are thinking.
But we suffer a strong tendency to project our own perceptions onto the world and others without considering the wide variability there is between different people’s perspectives.
Maybe this should be an integral part of firearms training, and it might even be sensible guidance for politicians.
