“How the Brain Lies and Misrepresents the 'Real World'”
November 2nd 2010 12:03
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On Oct. 27 in Seerly Hall, University of Northern Iowa associate professor of psychology Otto MacLin gave a presentation titled, "How the Brian Lies and Misrepresents the ‘Real World.'" MacLin explained with numerous visual and demonstrations how the brain lies so it can attempt to explain its surroundings.
According to MacLin, the brain is the ultimate con artist.
"The brain fails to see things that are there – there are things there you don't even see," he said.
He then provided examples that were visually confusing. Sometimes the brain showed pictures moving when everything was still and other times the brain distorted the size of the images.
Ellen Schultz, a communication sciences and disorders major, attended the presentation for her Dynamics of Human Development class. She thought the presentation was quite interesting and also "surprising in how much your brain actually tricks you in the way you see things."
According to MacLin, everything we see is upside down, but thanks to the brain, it changes the perceptions and fixes it. It's the same way with color. Color does not exist. Color is a spectrum of electromagnetic wavelengths that is on the same spectrum as microwaves or televisions. Color only exists in our heads so our brains lie and make up color.
The reason our minds do this is because they want to clear away the haze and fix the uncertainty. According to MacLin, "the brain's job is to take in critical information whenever it's not clear and try to resolve it."
The brain wants to feel like it has figured the world out and that it is not walking around aimlessly with an incomplete feeling. Therefore, the brain fills in the gaps the world does not give it.
Our brains are constantly reconstructing and adapting. According to MacLin, it's needed in a world that is always reconstructing and adapting faster than we are. MacLin gave a simple example. Think of how many times you have seen your mom. You have probably seen her hundreds of thousands of times, but your brain does not hold that many images of her. You have a vague, morphed image that will change the next time you see her.
If you were held-up at gunpoint, would you be able to identify the face holding the gun? Do you assume the face would be forever imprinted in your head? Some may assume that at that close of range there is no way not to immediately recognize the criminal. When you and the witnesses are questioned later and asked simple questions such as what race he was, everyone would have a different answer. MacLin said everyone sees something different and the cross-race effect would take place. This means that false identification would happen because people of one race are terrible at recognizing people of another race. MacLin gave the example of how researchers in South Africa have found that South African blacks have a hard time recognizing African Americans.
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