Personal Development for Smart People Forums - View Single Post - Why the LoA Does Not Work for Some People

MrBig · 07-17-2007, 10:54 PM

This is an excerpt from The Conscious Universe by Dean Radin, Ph.D.

"A classic experiment by psychologist J.S. Bruner and Leo Postman demonstrated that sometimes what we see – or think we see – is not really there. Bruner and Postman created a deck of normal playing cards, except that some of the suit symbols were color-reversed.

For example, the queen of diamonds had black-colored diamonds instead of red. The special cards were shuffled into an ordinary deck, and then as they were displayed one at a time, people were asked to identify them as fast as possible. The cards were first shown very briefly, too fast to identify them accurately.

Then the display time was lengthened until all the cards could be identified. The amazing thing is that while all the cards were eventually identified with great confidence, no one noticed that there was anything out of the ordinary in the deck.

People saw a black four of hearts as either a four of spades or as a normal four of hearts with red hearts. In other words, their expectations about what playing cards should look like determined what they actually saw.

When the researchers increased the amount of time that the cards were displayed, some people eventually began to notice that something was amiss, but they did not know exactly what was wrong. One person, while directly gazing at a red six of spades, said, "That's the six of spades but there's something wrong with it—the black spade has a red border."'

As the display time increased even more, people became more confused and hesitant. Eventually, most people saw what was before their eyes. But even when the cards were displayed for forty times the length of time needed to recognize normal playing cards, about 10 percent of the color-reversed playing cards were never correctly identified by any of the people!

The mental discomfort associated with seeing something that does not match our expectations is reflected in the exasperation of one participant in the experiment who, while looking at the cards, reported, "I can't make the suit out, whatever it is. It didn't even look like a card that time. I don't know what color it is now or whether it's a spade or a heart. I'm not even sure what a spade looks like. My God!" "

07-17-2007, 10:54 PM	#1 (permalink)
MrBig Member Join Date: Jul 2007 Posts: 97	Why the LoA Does Not Work for Some People This is an excerpt from The Conscious Universe by Dean Radin, Ph.D. "A classic experiment by psychologist J.S. Bruner and Leo Postman demonstrated that sometimes what we see – or think we see – is not really there. Bruner and Postman created a deck of normal playing cards, except that some of the suit symbols were color-reversed. For example, the queen of diamonds had black-colored diamonds instead of red. The special cards were shuffled into an ordinary deck, and then as they were displayed one at a time, people were asked to identify them as fast as possible. The cards were first shown very briefly, too fast to identify them accurately. Then the display time was lengthened until all the cards could be identified. The amazing thing is that while all the cards were eventually identified with great confidence, no one noticed that there was anything out of the ordinary in the deck. People saw a black four of hearts as either a four of spades or as a normal four of hearts with red hearts. In other words, their expectations about what playing cards should look like determined what they actually saw. When the researchers increased the amount of time that the cards were displayed, some people eventually began to notice that something was amiss, but they did not know exactly what was wrong. One person, while directly gazing at a red six of spades, said, "That's the six of spades but there's something wrong with it—the black spade has a red border."' As the display time increased even more, people became more confused and hesitant. Eventually, most people saw what was before their eyes. But even when the cards were displayed for forty times the length of time needed to recognize normal playing cards, about 10 percent of the color-reversed playing cards were never correctly identified by any of the people! The mental discomfort associated with seeing something that does not match our expectations is reflected in the exasperation of one participant in the experiment who, while looking at the cards, reported, "I can't make the suit out, whatever it is. It didn't even look like a card that time. I don't know what color it is now or whether it's a spade or a heart. I'm not even sure what a spade looks like. My God!" "