Jonah Lehrer at The Boston Globe describes recent experiments into the nature of expectation, looking at research into people’s experiences of wine, medication, motor cars and a host of other products. Fascinating studies.
The human brain, research suggests, isn’t built for objectivity. The brain doesn’t passively take in perceptions. Rather, brain regions involved in developing expectations can systematically alter the activity of areas involved in sensation. The cortex is “cooking the books,” adjusting its own inputs depending on what it expects.
Although much of this research has been done by scientists interested in marketing and consumer decisions, the work has broad implications. People assume that they perceive reality as it is, that our senses accurately record the outside world. Yet the science suggests that, in important ways, people experience reality not as it is, but as they expect it to be.
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Mar 5th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
And the problem with expectation is that it so often precedes disappointment. Fascinating article.