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Psychology Psychology is by far one of the most useful classes I have taken so far. It helps me a lot in my everyday life, especially when it comes to interpreting something, for instance my own behavior and attitudes, or behavior and attitudes of others. There are a lot of fields in which psychology helps me, and one of them is perception of various things. Now that I am taking this class I am able to analyze my own perception as well as perceptions of others, whether we are talking about a movie, a book, some social issue or event. I have come to realize due to my psychology class that our perception is affected greatly by what we already know or believe in, and within the course of this paper I will elaborate on how I understand perception based on the psychology lessons learned. A movie that I have recently seen changed my perception of reality in a religious aspect.
The movie is titled Stigmata, and the message that the movie portrays involves criticizing the Catholic Church. This film implies that the Church is not necessary to worship God because God is everywhere and in all aspects of life. According to the movie the Church is aware of this, however, and they refuse to tell the people because they will loose power if the members of the Catholic community become aware that they have false perceptions. Within the movie, in a religious aspect, the perception of reality of the Catholic society is completely shaped by the Catholic Church. Believers of Catholicism will modify their own perception of religion depending on the messages that the Church portrays to them. The church has great power over the beliefs of its religious followers.
On more of a personal level, after watching this movie, my views regarding the purpose of the Church were slightly altered. I questioned and thoroughly thought of the Church and the reason for attending Mass on Sundays. I finally concluded that it is just a place where one can focus on religious thoughts without distractions from the outside world. The idea that the perception of individuals is shaped by the community they are associated with is accurate in most cases.
Throughout my experiences I realized that being influenced by your surroundings is virtually unavoidable. Reality is what one determines it is by exploring and coming to a conclusion on their own. By staying as open minded as possible, one can determine reality on the basis of their own experiences, and not the ones of others. Sensation and perception, two related fields of study in psychology. Sensation is the power to receive information from your surroundings through your senses. Perceptual constance are the abilities to filter and organize all the information taken in by our senses.
Shape constancy gives us the ability to realize the shape of an object does not change when the angle of vision changes. Size constancy is the realization that an objects size does not change regardless of the distance from you. Another type organizational strategy is figure-ground. This is the ability to distinguish the back-ground from the object of focus. With these organizational strategies, questions arise pertaining to the extent and origin of these abilities. "Seeing conditions what we believe believing conditions what we see. " This observation is the core of society and the substratum of human behavior. Psychological studies have reinforced and proven theories involving the conditioning of humans.
However, failure lies in the attempt to assign the causes to a single concept. Among the vast influences for human behavior is our tendency to see what our beliefs would have us to, and hence, believe only what we happen to see. In order to attain total understanding of the profound thought the quotation develops, I will attempt to analyze and apply it to my experience and knowledge of conditioning. Primarily, I need a concise interpretation of the idea. The contextual definition of see is to perceive by the eye.
Unfortunately, sight, is only one of five senses. Even worse, the images we see through our eyes are statistically only one-millionth of our actual reality. Therefore, anything we see is not the entire being or actuality of the world around us but instead a finite perception (by means of vision) of the universe. Philosophically, belief is "blind", in a selfish sense; it is the process of making ideas true.
Transitionally, the quotation can be interpreted as "Our finite perception of reality determines what we will accept as the truth, and what we view as the truth will alter our already limited perceptions of life. " Although wordy, a better connotation is produced and the coherence of the concept is increased. Although our perceptions are finite, belief plays a major role in what we see as well. As humans we subconsciously act how we think we should. Our actions are based upon our beliefs.
We do what we think we ought to. If the subconscious can control our actions, then what stops it from controlling our senses? Nothing. Tragically, the insurmountable uncertainty of what we see is increased even more when we apply the knowledge that our vision is indeed limited.
Doubt runs through our minds when the painstaking reality that the same beliefs we have encompassed into our lives are now known to have based on our unreliable vision. This same doubt forces us as humans to make ourselves reinforce our beliefs by spreading them and forcing them on others. I have to be content with what appears to be my reality. However, I enter an endless dilemma when I perceive something that is unrecognizable to my beliefs, or something that coincides with what I want to see.
Hence, I begin to let my beliefs control my vision and what I see is no longer actuality but instead what I'd feel comfortable in observing. In order to see how the perception of people from various cultures is affected by the things they know and believe, we will deploy here the issue that has triggered a lot of controversial responses from different people around the world World Trade Center Bombing. On September 11, 2001, a horrific terrorist attack was waged against the United States. Thousands of working men and women were killed in the attacks, leaving the country grieving and angry. Varying interpretations of Islamic values, Americas indulgent culture, and United States foreign policy are all sources of resentment for America in the Middle East.
During this time of terrorism, many Americans have been looking for a religious reasoning to account for the resentment for the United States among many Middle Eastern peoples. In contrast to the Middle East, American culture tends to be ostentatious and thrives on indulgence. It has been assumed that the people of the Middle East, being predominantly Muslim, fear the corruption of their culture by the omnipresent American culture. Many speculators have looked to the Koran for explanations.
However, the Koran can be translated in many ways, making it difficult for non-Arabic speaking people to interpret its meaning. Despite this difficulty, in the months since the attacks, many Americans have been interpreting passages of the Koran to be promoting the killing of non-believers as well as violent actions against suppressors of Islam. The instruction to wage war in Koran might be interpreted figuratively by some, but considering the recent events, it seems as though the members of Al Qaeda took this instruction literally. On the other hand, the Koran is renowned for condemning such violence. There are many passages in the Koran urging mercy toward others, tolerance, and respect for life. So, while this violent aggression may be accepted and supported by Osama Bin Laden and his followers, it cannot be assumed that all Middle Eastern resentment for the United States stemmed from these kinds of religious beliefs.
In scrutinizing this matter, it would be naive to ignore the controversy of the United States foreign policy in the Middle East. The establishment of Israel as a Jewish state after the partition of Palestine in 1948 infuriated many people in the Arab world. Since the United States government so actively supports Israel in all its endeavors, many Middle Eastern people do not differentiate the United States from Israel as an oppressor. In addition to the United States support of Israel, the U.
S. involvement in the Gulf War is a great source for this kind of resentment. Americas involvement in the war was controversial since the beginning. The thing is, while people from the United States, Great Britain, and the majority of other European countries perceive this act of terror as one of the most horrible things that happened in the last decade, a good part of the Muslim or Arabic community perceive this to be something that US has deserved itself. They believe that US foreign policy towards Muslim countries was wrong from the very beginning, therefore the bombings are justified, and they are to show Americans that they are not the only ones capable of using force. Cultural differences, beliefs and values that are different, explain why the interpretation of the tragedy varies in different circles.
And that is still another evidence of a fact that our perception is affected by something we know and believe. Words Count: 1, 542.
Free research essays on topics related to: human behavior, catholic church, perception of reality, united states foreign policy, middle eastern
Research essay sample on United States Foreign Policy Perception Of Reality
