{"id":4301,"date":"2020-05-01T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-05-01T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/?p=4301"},"modified":"2020-04-24T10:55:02","modified_gmt":"2020-04-24T14:55:02","slug":"unpacking-perceptions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/2020\/05\/01\/unpacking-perceptions\/","title":{"rendered":"Unpacking Perceptions"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

There’s value in listening to your self-critique.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"maura<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n

If I were a better human being, I wouldn\u2019t have had that experience. Most of us, at some point in our lives, have thought this to ourselves in response to something we heard or saw. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, suppose you think your colleague\u2019s voice sounds shrill \u2014 not just high pitched. And you wonder, \u201cIf I were nicer or a better human being, would her voice have sounded that way to me?\u201d Your worry might get more specific. You might wonder, \u201cIf I were less subject to bias, if I lived in a different cultural landscape \u2014 one where my background assumptions about voice and authority had been shaped differently \u2014 would my colleague\u2019s voice actually just sound high?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s another example: The North American media landscape tends to be white centric in its portrayals of \u201cgood\u201d grooming and beauty. So if you \u2014 regardless of your own racial identity \u2014 have had little exposure to people with tightly coiled hair worn naturally, you might perceive that hair as dry, where \u201cdry\u201d has an implication of being unhealthy. You might think, \u201cIntellectually, I know that\u2019s perfectly healthy hair. If I had been less exposed to biased media, maybe that person\u2019s hair would look different to me.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, having those realizations doesn\u2019t shake the perceptions of the hair, or of the colleague\u2019s voice. You can know that \u201ca different me might have a different perception\u201d and can even think of your original perception as problematic, but it doesn\u2019t disappear. In that sense, our experiences seem beyond our immediate control. But there\u2019s still something right about seeing our moral selves as invested in them. In part, that\u2019s because of some practical implications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The debate about whether beliefs, desires, or intentions can directly change perception matters, for example, in legal contexts. Suppose someone is testifying in court that they saw another person do something incriminating. The person testifying might think to herself, \u201cIf I were less affected by racist media portrayals, I might have seen or heard things differently.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, what do we do about all of this? Part of what I\u2019m arguing is that our perceptions are another area of life in which you could subject yourself to moral critique. You could say, \u201cMy better, more authentic self wants
to be different.\u201d But exactly how could that be managed?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the things I\u2019ve been researching is the role vivid imagination plays in reducing certain kinds of bias. It\u2019s an empirical hypothesis that is still being tested, but I became interested in it because, through imagining, you can recommit to how you think it is appropriate to see things. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s an example most parents can relate to: You\u2019re having trouble getting your 3-year-old\u2019s bedtime routine underway, and you\u2019re tired and cranky. His face strikes you as having a rude or a disrespectful expression. But you remember the previous night when you were cheerful and well rested, and you were having fun goofing around. You think, \u201cI\u2019m not sure there\u2019s much difference between what he\u2019s doing now and what he did last night when he just looked cheekily affectionate, or mischievous but loving.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When you vividly imagine the way his face looked yesterday, that\u2019s part of what pulls you to the awareness that maybe your current experience is not just being driven by his face but also by your emotions, because you can remember a similar face yesterday that looked very different to you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, alternative imaginings are vivid considerations about what it would be like for someone to behave in a counter-stereotypical way \u2014 like a large man being gentle, or an elderly person displaying rapid-fire wit. But, you can only do that imagining if you believe it is in fact possible for the person to be going against the stereotype. You have to do that work. And that is a commitment to prevent your negative assumptions, or your emotional state, from clouding how you view someone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s philosophically significant \u2014 that gut sense of \u201cI did not come off well at this moment.\u201d It\u2019s something to trust, and then consider what it reveals. Getting to that worried reflection actually strikes me as a self-improvement; you\u2019re trying to restore a balance between what inside of you and what outside of you is driving your perceptions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Tumulty delves further into this topic in her new book, Alien Experience<\/em> (Oxford University Press, January 2020).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s value in listening to your self-critique.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1221,"featured_media":4305,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[570,90],"coauthors":[569],"class_list":["post-4301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-discover","tag-bias","tag-philosophy"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/palXSH-17n","amp_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2020\/05\/20131101_tumulty_051.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1221"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4301"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4301\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4375,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4301\/revisions\/4375"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4301"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=4301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}