Have you ever wondered how what you see and perceive around you compares to the next person? Perception is one of the most complex and debated topics in psychology and philosophy. As humans, we rely heavily on our senses and perceptions to navigate the world, but are they showing us an objective truth or a subjective experience colored by our own minds?
You may assume what you perceive is an accurate reflection of the real world, but there are many reasons to believe perception is highly subjective and shaped by individual experiences. At the same time, without some degree of shared perception and ways of understanding the world, society as we know it would not function.
Is perception subjective or objective? The debate around the objectivity or subjectivity of perception has persisted for centuries, with valid arguments on both sides. As you go about your day interacting with the world and people around you, consider how your own perceptions and interpretations of events compare to others. The truth about perception may be far more nuanced than an either/or distinction.
Table of Contents
What Is Perception? The Physiology of Perception
Perception is how we interpret the world around us through our senses. Our perceptions are shaped by physiological processes in our body and brain that help us organize and understand the constant stream of signals from our senses.
Vision and hearing are our primary senses. In the eye, light enters and is focused onto our retina, which contains photoreceptors that convert the light into neural signals sent to the brain. The brain then constructs a visual perception of the world. Similarly, sound waves enter our ears and are converted into neural signals by hair cells in the inner ear, which the brain translates into the sounds we perceive.
Our perceptions are also influenced by our experiences, memories, knowledge, motivations, and emotions. The brain fills in details and makes inferences beyond the raw sensory data. This is why perception is subjective and open to illusion. However, some aspects of perception, like the basic processes of sensing light, sound, touch, smell, and taste, are determined by our physiology and shared across individuals, making them more objective.
In summary, perception arises from a combination of bottom-up sensory input and top-down processing by the brain. Both objective and subjective factors shape how we perceive the world. Our perceptions are the result of the complex interplay between our bodies, brains, environments, experiences, and expectations. Understanding how perception works can help us gain insight into ourselves and others.
Read more – The Physiology of Perception
Is Perception Subjective OR Objective?
Perception can be subjective or objective, depending on the circumstances. Subjective perception refers to interpreting sensory input based on your own experiences, beliefs, and biases. Objective perception aims to perceive something as it really is, without the influence of personal feelings or prejudices.
In everyday life, perception is often subjective. For example, you may perceive a movie or song differently than a friend based on your unique tastes and experiences. However, under controlled conditions, perception can be quite objective. Scientists use double-blind studies and control groups to remove bias and see the objective truth.
Some factors that influence subjective perception include:
- Emotions: How you feel can impact how you interpret the world around you. When you’re happy, you may perceive everything more positively. When anxious or afraid, you may perceive threats that aren’t really there.
- Beliefs and values: What you believe to be true about the world shapes how you perceive reality. For example, your political ideology or religious beliefs
- Past experiences: How you’ve experienced similar situations in the past impacts your perception in the present. Two people can perceive the same event differently based on their unique life experiences.
- Culture: The culture you live in provides a lens through which you view the world. How you perceive concepts like time, individuality, and personal space is culturally dependent.
While subjective perception is natural and inescapable, it’s important to recognize how it impacts you. Making an effort towards more objective perception can help reduce prejudice and conflict, leading to greater understanding between people with diverse backgrounds and beliefs. Overall, perception depends on both what’s really out there and what’s already in your head.
The Case for Subjective Perception
Perception is inherently subjective. Our senses filter information from the world around us, and our brain interprets those signals to construct our reality. This complex process introduces many opportunities for personal biases, preconceptions, and preferences to shape how we perceive the world.
Limited Senses
Our senses are limited in what they can detect. We can only see visible light, hear a narrow range of frequencies, feel a certain spectrum of textures, and so on. The world contains many phenomena outside the scope of human perception. What we can detect is further filtered by what our brain pays attention to and remembers. We miss many details and events, even when they are within our perceptual abilities.
Mental Frameworks
How we interpret the information from our senses is strongly influenced by our existing mental frameworks, beliefs, experiences, values, and expectations. We tend to perceive things in ways that confirm what we already think is true. When we encounter something unexpected or contradictory, we often rationalize it to fit our preexisting assumptions. These tendencies introduce an inherent subjectivity to human perception.
Varying Interpretations
Different people can perceive the same event in very different ways due to variations in their senses, mental frameworks, and life experiences. Eyewitness testimony, for example, is notoriously unreliable because people perceive and remember details differently. Our cultural backgrounds, personal histories, and other factors lead us to interpret the same information in varying and subjective ways.
While human perception has an objective, physiological basis in our sensory organs and neural pathways, there are many opportunities for subjectivity to influence how we perceive and understand the world around us. Our senses are limited, our attention is selective, and we interpret information through the lens of our own experiences, expectations, and beliefs. Perception may aim to reflect reality, but it is shaped by the subjective qualities of the perceiver.
Factors Influencing Subjective Perception
Your perception of the world is shaped by many factors, some within your control and some not. Several influences can skew how you subjectively interpret information and experiences.
Upbringing and environment
The beliefs and values instilled in you from an early age by your family, community, and culture significantly impact your perception. The surroundings you grew up in and live in now also play a role. If you were raised in a rural farming town, your views will differ from those of someone raised in a big city. Your perception is naturally biased by what you have been exposed to based on your environment and upbringing.
Read more
Past experiences
The events you have lived through and situations you have faced in the past color how you perceive the present and future. If you have had negative experiences with a particular group or type of person, you may make assumptions about them that sway your perception. Likewise, positive past experiences can make you see the world through rose-colored glasses. Your perception is shaped by the sum of your experiences over time.
Expectations and beliefs
The preconceptions and assumptions you hold about people, places, and life in general powerfully impact your perception. If you expect a new city to be dangerous or believe a new acquaintance to be dishonest, you will likely interpret situations and interactions through that lens, whether warranted or not. Your perception is guided by the beliefs and expectations you carry with you.
Emotional state
Your emotional and mental condition at any given moment affects how you perceive the world around you. When you are feeling stressed, afraid, or insecure, your perception tends to be more negative. In contrast, when you are happy and relaxed, life appears brighter. Your perception is influenced by your ever-changing emotional state.
Read more
In summary, your perception—whether subjective or objective—is shaped by a variety of factors. Understanding how these influences bias your views can help you gain deeper insights and make better judgments about people and events. Looking at the world from multiple perspectives leads to wisdom.
The Case for Objective Perception
The case for objective perception argues that our senses provide an accurate representation of the external world. While our interpretations of sensory information may be subjective, the information itself is not.
Visual perception is a prime example. The visible light spectrum is the same for all normally sighted people. We see the sky as blue, the sun as yellow, etc. because of the way the cones in our eyes detect the wavelengths of light. The colors and shapes we perceive are determined by the physical properties of the world, not by our individual experiences or biases.
Our other senses also detect objective properties. We feel the temperature of an object based on how fast its molecules are moving (a physical fact), not on our preconceptions. The inner ear detects motion and balance in a predictable, law-governed fashion. The molecules that trigger scent and taste receptors have specific shapes that determine how they interact with our senses.
While perception is a constructive process dependent on the brain’s interpretation of sensory data, the data itself is anchored in objective reality. Two people looking at the same object from the same vantage point under the same conditions should perceive its basic properties similarly. Of course, their interpretations of what they perceive may differ based on life experiences, values, and other subjective factors. But at its core, human perception evolved to provide an accurate sense of the world as it really is.
Some argue that certain illusions prove perception is subjective. However, most illusions simply reveal the shortcuts our perceptual system uses to construct a coherent experience from imperfect data. They do not negate the fact that the system as a whole aims to reflect the objective, shared world we inhabit. Perception may be imperfect, but it is not purely subjective.
There are objective constraints—the laws of physics, the properties of light and sound, the shapes of molecules—that give rise to the sensory information our brains use to build our perceptual experiences.
How Our Senses Shape Our Perception
Our perception of the world is shaped by what we sense and observe every day. The five human senses—sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch—provide the raw data that our brain uses to interpret the world around us. How accurately we perceive things depends on how well our senses gather and relay information.
Sight
Vision is our primary sense, providing the majority of the information we perceive about the world. What we see with our eyes directly impacts our perception and understanding of reality. However, sight can be deceptive. Optical illusions, blind spots, and visual biases demonstrate how our eyes can distort and manipulate what we perceive. We also tend to see what we expect or want to see, rather than what is really there.
Hearing
What we hear also significantly influences our perception. The auditory information we receive from the world around us shapes our judgments, reactions, and beliefs. However, like sight, hearing can be misleading. Strange noises in a dark room can seem frightening until you realize their harmless source. Our perception of what we’re hearing can also be affected by what we’re seeing, and vice versa. Audio and visual information are closely linked in our minds.
Other Senses
Our remaining senses likewise play a role in perception. Smells, tastes, and textures evoke emotions, memories, and gut reactions that alter our view of the world, for better or worse. When senses mismatch, as in the case of synesthesia, perception can be profoundly impacted.
In summary, human perception depends on the raw data we receive from our senses. However, our senses are imperfect and prone to illusions, biases, and mismatches that distort our view of reality. Perception may be subjective, but our senses at least shape the palette that our mind uses to paint its interpretive pictures of the world.
How perception shapes our beliefs, thoughts, and actions
Our perceptions shape how we view and interact with the world around us. They influence our beliefs, thoughts, and actions in many ways:
- Our perceptions determine what we notice and focus on. We can’t perceive everything in our environment at once, so our perceptions act as filters, selecting certain details to pay attention to while ignoring others. The details we notice based on our perceptions then shape our beliefs and thoughts.
- Perceptions shape our interpretations and judgments. How we perceive a situation or person impacts how we interpret them and the judgments we form. The same situation can be perceived and interpreted in very different ways by different people based on their experiences, values, and biases.
- Perceptions drive our actions and reactions. How we perceive an event or experience directly determines how we act and respond. Our perceptions prompt us to either approach or avoid a situation. They make us feel either positively or negatively towards something, causing us to support or oppose it.
- Past perceptions create expectations for the future. Our perceptions are also based on our past experiences, which shape our expectations. We expect the world to continue functioning the way we have perceived it in the past. When our expectations are not met, it can lead to feelings of discomfort, stress, or confusion.
In summary, human perception is highly subjective and personal. How we perceive the world shapes our beliefs and influences our thoughts and actions each and every day. Gaining awareness of what shapes our own perceptions and understanding how perception works can help reduce misunderstandings and lead to more constructive interactions. Overall, perception is a powerful mental process that we rely on to navigate the world around us.
The Link Between Perception and Behavior
Perception is inherently linked to behavior. How you perceive the world around you directly impacts how you act and react in it. Your perceptions shape your reality and experiences, which then circle back to influence your perceptions again. It’s an endless feedback loop.
For example, if you perceive a new work colleague as threatening or untrustworthy, you will likely behave guardedly around them. You may avoid direct contact or withhold information. In turn, their behavior toward you may become more distrustful or competitive as a result. This reinforces your initial perception of them as threatening, and the cycle continues.
On the other hand, if you perceive a new social group as welcoming and friendly, you will probably behave openly and enthusiastically around them. Your positive behavior will likely be reciprocated, strengthening your perception of that group as supportive. This positive feedback loop leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy where your perceptions create your reality.
In short, your perceptions dictate how you see the world, and your behavior determines how the world sees you. The interactions between the two shape your experiences and relationships. By being aware of this link, you can gain insight into the roots of certain patterns and make choices to shift them. If needed, work to challenge negative perceptions and the behaviors that reinforce them. With conscious effort, you can reshape your reality by changing either your perceptions or your behaviors. The loop flows in both directions.
Understanding this crucial connection between perception and behavior gives you an opportunity for growth. Monitor your perceptions and patterns, reflect on the experiences that formed them, and decide whether any need to be reevaluated or restructured. Make choices that will positively impact the loop and create the reality you desire. You have the power to change your experiences by changing your perceptions and behaviors. The loop is endlessly flowing; direct it well.
The Role of Experience in Perception
Experience plays a significant role in shaping our perceptions. What we have seen, heard, smelled, tasted, and touched in the past directly influences what we perceive in the present moment.
Our experiences over time build mental representations in our minds that help us interpret new sensory information. These representations, known as schemas, provide expectations and assumptions about the world. When we encounter something new, we compare it to our existing schemas to make sense of it. If it matches our expectations, we perceive it as familiar. If it’s different, it seems strange or out of place.
For example, when you walk into a kitchen, you expect to see certain objects like a stove, refrigerator, and sink. Your kitchen schema, built from a lifetime of experiences, leads you to perceive those items as normal and expected. But if you spot a giant stuffed animal in the kitchen, it will catch your attention because it violates your existing schema. Your perception is filtered through your experiences.
The familiarity of our schemas also makes them prone to biases and inaccuracies. We may perceive things incorrectly because we expect to see them a certain way. Our experiences can also lead to stereotypes, generalizations, and prejudices that distort our perceptions of people and events.
The role of experience in perception highlights why two people can perceive the same thing differently. We all have our own unique set of experiences, schemas, and expectations that shape how we interpret the world around us. While perception relies on our senses, what we ultimately see, hear, and feel depends largely on our personal experiences.
The Influence of Emotions and Expectations
Your perceptions are shaped by both objective sensory information as well as subjective influences like emotions, experiences, and expectations. While sensory information provides raw data about the world around you, your mind must interpret this information to make sense of it. This interpretation process introduces opportunities for subjectivity.
Two major subjective influences on your perceptions are your emotions and expectations. When you’re in a positive emotional state, you’re more likely to perceive the world around you in an optimistic and hopeful way. In contrast, when you’re anxious or upset, you may perceive even neutral events more negatively.
Your expectations, or preconceptions, also shape your perceptions. You’re more likely to perceive something the way you expect to perceive it. For example, if you expect a movie to be boring, you’re more likely to perceive it as boring while watching it.
These subjective influences interact with objective sensory information and together shape your ultimate perception. Your perceptions feel objective and accurate, yet they are constructed interpretations in your own mind. Understanding how emotions, experiences, expectations, and other subjective factors shape your perceptions can help you gain valuable self-insight and understand how you relate to the world around you.
Recognizing opportunities for subjectivity in your own perceptions as well as in your interactions with others can help reduce misunderstandings and foster more constructive relationships.
While perceptions feel like a direct reflection of objective reality, they are actually complex constructions built from both sensory data and subjective interpretations in your mind. Your emotions, experiences, and expectations are powerful influences that interact with the objective information your senses take in and shape your ultimate perceptions in meaningful ways. Being aware of these influences can lead to valuable insights and more skillful interactions.
Perceptual Errors and Illusions: Seeing Is Not Always Believing
Perception is highly subjective and prone to errors and illusions. Our senses and brains interpret information in ways that can distort our view of reality. Some common perceptual errors include:
Confirmation bias
We tend to search for and believe information that confirms what we already think and ignore information that contradicts our preexisting beliefs. This bias leads us to make poor decisions and form inaccurate judgments.
Read more
Anchoring bias
We rely too heavily on the first information we receive (the “anchor”) and fail to adequately adjust our thinking based on subsequent information. For example, if you start negotiating a price at an arbitrary number, that number will anchor the negotiation and influence the final price, even if it has no relevance.
Framing effect
How information is presented (the “frame”) influences how we perceive it. For example, there is a big difference in perception between a 10% chance of failure and a 90% chance of success, even though they refer to the same outcome. The frame determines our perception.
Illusions
Our senses can be fooled by illusions like the Müller-Lyer illusion, where two lines of the same length appear different. Illusions prove our perception is constructed, not a perfect representation of reality.
The key is to be aware of these common errors and illusions. Seek out alternative perspectives and be open to information that contradicts your preexisting views. Look for objective data and evidence rather than relying on potentially misleading subjective perceptions or intuitions. Understanding how our minds really work can help us perceive and understand the world more accurately.
Read more
The Perception-Reality Distinction
Perception and reality are not always the same. Our perceptions are shaped by many factors, including beliefs, experiences, biases, and preferences. Reality, on the other hand, refers to the actual state of affairs—the way things really are.
The distinction between perception and reality is important to keep in mind for several reasons:
- Our perceptions are subjective and can be inaccurate. We each see the world through our own personal lens, which means we can interpret the same situation in very different ways. Our perceptions are also prone to biases and logical fallacies that lead us to draw incorrect conclusions.
- Reality is objective and fact-based. While perceptions vary from person to person, reality remains the same regardless of who is observing it or what they believe. Facts are facts.
- Perceptions drive our actions, so inaccurate perceptions can lead to poor decisions and behaviors. If we perceive a situation wrongly, we may act in ways we later regret. It’s important to verify our perceptions against the facts whenever possible.
- We can shape perceptions by influencing what people believe and expect to see. This is why it’s critical to seek out objective facts and truthful, unbiased information. We must be willing to challenge assumptions and consider alternative perspectives.
- Perceptions and reality interact in a loop. Our perceptions influence our realities, and our realities shape our perceptions. This interaction has important implications for things like self-fulfilling prophecies, placebo effects, and stereotypes.
In the end, while we can never achieve a perfectly objective view of reality, we must make the effort to understand how profoundly our perceptions impact our thoughts and behaviors. An awareness of the perception-reality distinction is the first step toward building a more just, compassionate, and truth-based society.
Conclusion
In the end, perception is a complex phenomenon that has elements of both subjectivity and objectivity. While your senses provide raw data about the world, your mind actively constructs meaning from this information based on your beliefs, experiences, and biases. However, there are also objective constraints on perception based on the physical properties of the world and how our sensory systems have evolved to detect them.
Both nature and nurture shape how you see the world. Understanding this interplay can help you gain useful insights into yourself and others. The truth is, perception is not either/or but rather both/and. Your reality is what you make of the world, but not in isolation from the world as it really is.
References
- UNDERSTANDING CONFLICT AND WAR: VOL. 1: THE DYNAMIC PSYCHOLOGICAL FIELD, Chapter 7, Perception And Reality* By R.J. Rummel from the webpage University of Hawaii
- Mishaps, errors, and cognitive experiences: on the conceptualization of perceptual illusions by Daniele Zavagno1* Olga Daneyko2 Rossana Actis-Grosso1 – 1Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milano, Italy, 2Department of Neuroscience, University of Parma, Parma, Italy
- Emotions vs. Expectations by Jake
Let’s boost your self-growth with Believe in Mind.
Interested in self-reflection tips, learning hacks, and knowing ways to calm down your mind? We offer you the best content which you have been looking for.