Hockenbury Discovering Psychology 5th txtbk

The Effects of Experience on Perceptual Interpretations127The Effects of Experience onPerceptual InterpretationsOur educational, cultural, and life experiences shape what we perceive. As a simpleexample, consider airplane cockpits. If your knowledge of the instruments containedin an airplane cockpit is limited, as is the case with your author Sandy, an airplanecockpit looks like a meaningless jumble of dials. But your author Don, who isa pilot, has a very different perception of an airplane cockpit. Rather than a blur ofdials, he sees altimeters, VORs, airspeed and RPM indicators, and other instruments,each with a specific function. Our different perceptions of an airplane cockpitare shaped by our prior learning experiences.Learning experiences can vary not just from person to person but also from cultureto culture. The Culture and Human Behavior box, “Culture and the Müller-Lyer Illusion,” discusses the important role that unique cultural experiences canplay in perception.Perception can also be influenced by an individual’s expectations, motives,and interests. The term perceptual set refers to the tendency to perceive objectsor situations from a particular frame of reference. Perceptual sets usually lead usperceptual setThe tendency to perceive objects or situationsfrom a particular frame of reference.CULTURE AND HUMAN BEHAVIORCulture and the Müller-Lyer Illusion: The Carpentered-World HypothesisSince the early 1900s, it has been known that people in industrializedsocieties are far more susceptible to the Müller-Lyerillusion than are people in some nonindustrialized societies(see Matsumoto & Juang, 2008). How can this difference beexplained?Cross-cultural psychologist Marshall Segall and his colleagues(1963, 1966) proposed the carpentered-world hypothesis. Theysuggested that people living in urban, industrialized environmentshave a great deal of perceptual experience in judging lines,corners, edges, and other rectangular, manufactured objects.Thus, people in carpentered cultures would be more susceptibleto the Müller-Lyer illusion, which involves arrows mimicking a cornerthat is jutting toward or away from the perceiver.In contrast, people who live in non carpentered cultures morefrequently encounter natural objects. In these cultures, perceptualexperiences with straight lines and right angles are relativelyrare. Segall predicted that people from these cultures would beless susceptible to the Müller-Lyer illusion.To test this idea, Segall and his colleagues (1963, 1966) comparedthe responses of people living in carpentered societies,such as Evanston, Illinois, with those of people living in noncarpenteredsocieties, such as remote areas of Africa. The resultsconfirmed their hypothesis. The Müller-Lyer illusion was strongerfor those living in carpentered societies. Could the difference inillusion susceptibility be due to some sort of biological differencerather than a cultural difference? To address this issue,psychologist V. Mary Stewart (1973) compared groups of whiteand African American schoolchildren living in Evanston, Illinois.Regardless of race, all of the children living in the city wereequally susceptible to the Müller-Lyer illusion. Stewart alsocompared groups of black African children in five different areasof Zambia—ranging from the very carpentered capital city ofLusaka to rural, noncarpentered areas of the country. OnceA Noncarpentered Environment People who live in urban, industrializedenvironments have a great deal of perceptual experiencewith straight lines, edges, and right angles. In contrast, peoplewho live in a noncarpentered environment, like the village shownhere, have little experience with right angles and perfectlystraight lines. Are people who grow up in a noncarpentered environmentequally susceptible to the Müller-Lyer illusion?again, the African children living in the carpentered society ofLusaka were just as susceptible to the illusion as the Evanstonchildren, but the African children living in the noncarpenteredcountryside were not.These findings provided some of the first evidence for the ideathat culture could shape perception. As Segall (1994) later concluded,“Every perception is the result of an interaction betweena stimulus and a perceiver shaped by prior experience.” Thus,people who grow up in very different cultures might well perceiveaspects of their physical environment differently.