Tools for Improving Your Critical Thinking

Can You Trust Your Visual Perceptions?

Oops! You may be on a slippery slope and you don't even know it! Like that man soon to land embarrassingly on that icy patch, you often may not see the obvious or not so obvious flaws in your perceptions which negatively impact the way you think, feel, and act. When you are involved in solving problems, making decisions, or resolving conflicts, it is important to be a "critical thinker." This means that you are willing to fully analyze the situation. To do so you must use your five senses of seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling. But can you trust your own perceptions? Are you sure of what you are seeing or hearing? What follows are some items which test your visual perceptions. They can be fully explained by understanding the physiological structure of your brain and how your eyes and brain interface. Consider this diagram of the eye and brain connection:

To make the pictures bigger click on them. When you done click on the Back Bar on your Browser to return to this page.

This diagram demonstrates that the left eye's image is translated on the right side of the brain and the right eye's image is translated on the left side of the brain. These optical illusions and visual tests really challenge the process in the brain in which the left and right side images are translated or decoded by the left and right side of the brain and then made sense for us. It is important for us to always realize that any sight, thought, sound, smell, touch, or taste we have is simply a series of biochemical electrical impulses which are sent out by our senses to our brain. There is a physiological process by which all our senses and thinking are impacted on. We are not a perfect species and therefore we must be extremely clear, use critical thinking, and not jump to assumptions immediately when we are faced with any problem, question, decision, or conflict which we must solve or clarify.

Here we have a task which greatly challenges the left and right side of the brain. Try this task a number of times and then try to figure out why it is so difficult to do the task which is being asked, which is simply to say what color you are looking at.

Read the statement in this box quickly:

FINISHED FILES ARE THE RESULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTIFIC STUDY COMBINED WITH THE EXPERIENCE OF MANY YEARS.

How many "f's" do you see in this statement? (take a few minutes to figure it out) The problem is that when you immediately responded you were only looking for the f's in the words which are nouns. What you forgot was to include the prepositions. This is a problem with our perceptions. We make internal assumptions or small choices on what we are allowing our brain to see even though our eyes are seeing the whole picture, our filtering system limits what we actually comprehend or fully understand.

Now here is a test of your perception to keep you off balance: You may or may not be able to tell if the lines are parallel. This again is due to the distortion coming from the confounding of the transfer of the decoded messages from the left and right side of the brain.

Here is one which can get you very confused or at least "swimming"When you look at this picture you will begin to have a very difficult time counting the dots. Why is this so? You can never count on things to be static or literal. There is ambiguity in life and it is important to be willing to accept this fact of life. Things are never as clear as they seem.

Look at this picture: Can you explain why the circle in the middle on the left is the same size as the circle in the middle on the right is? It is sure is important to not let the surrounding circumstance cloud your perceptions about things. Just because every one else in the group in one way, does not mean that the individual with whom you are dealing is the same. It is important to be sure you are not caught up with stereotypes which cloud your perceptions and thinking.

This next picture you will need to take some time with. Look at the center of the picture for a period of time. What do you think is going on between the left and right side of your brain to finally get you to have the dot in focus? That is right by focusing in on the black dot you are narrowing the field of vision for both the left and right eye thus helping them come into an "agreement" as to what the image is. Sometimes it is important to look at the trees carefully and not just look at the forest. There may be some very important discoveries to be made by the narrow focusing at times.

Now look at this picture:Do you see an old woman or young woman or can you see both? You know when you meet people you have your initial impression. This impression can be completely faulty until you take the time to really understand and fully comprehend whom the person is that you are meeting. Going just by your initial impulse or initial judgment, does not give that person a chance to fully demonstrate to you, who that person is and what that person is really about. Remember: looks can be deceiving.

Hey how about this? Look at this elephant and how many legs does it really have? Wow it is really hard isn't it. Why you know in your head the correct answer and yet your eyes are telling you something different. Is that not how life is? You can have preconceived ideas about things but the evidence when it is presented to you can be completely contradictory and not support your preconception or assumptions. It is imperative to test your assumptions, expectations, and preconceptions when dealing with solving problems, making decisions and handling conflicts in your life.

Now Look at this picture: Do you see one or two faces or can you see all three? Sometimes you think you really know what it is that you are perceiving to be real. That is until you take a closer look. If you are willing to accept that dialectic reasoning-that is being willing to look at two sides of every situation-is an important skill when solving problems, making decisions or handling conflicts then you will be able to see both the right and left side face as well as the overall face made up from both sides of the picture. Remember you need to see the "whole picture" before you can proceed to take actions on your solutions, decisions, or conflict resolutions.

Now how about this picture:Do you see the man playing the horn, or the woman's silhouette or both? When people go about "touting their own horn" or acting in ways which are unseemly or impulsive, it is often hard to see the beauty within them. Are you always in a rush to make a quick assessment of a person on their brusqueness, impulsiveness, or abrasiveness. Or do you take time to get to understand where they are coming from so that you can see the beauty of who they are below the surface they present to you?

Do you see the skull or do you see the woman in the skull? When you are looking at a frightening or scary problem do you get blinded from the "good" that might really be involved in the issue? Do you see a crisis or do you see a challenge? To be a creative problem solver and effective decision maker it is imperative that you fully absorb what it is that you are dealing with so that you can see both the minuses and pluses but also the good and the bad in the situation. Hint: look into the eye(s) of the problem (the skull).

Now look at this picture do you see the duck or the rabbit? If you only look at the left side of things you will see the duck. But if you are on the right of things you will see the rabbit. Right or left, conservative or liberal, black or white are just perspectives which you bring to the situation. It is imperative to make good decisions, solve problems, and settle conflicts that you are able to set aside your strong biases so that you can get the whole picture into perspective.

Look at this picture. Do see you the face of the Native American Man or do you see the back of the Native Alaska Man (Eskimo)? Are you so caught up sometimes with seeing the issues after the fact, that you are only looking at them from behind or do you face your problems head on? Do you take a proactive stance in dealing with life or are you merely reactive?

This picture requires you to focus on the four dots in the middle of the picture for thirty seconds and then to close your eyes and tilt your head back. A circle of light will appear and then an image in the circle will appear. This occurs because of the encoding of the larger picture by our starring at the picture. Many people feel this image is that of what they picture Jesus to look like. The point of this picture is that what you think you are seeing is not what is being picked up by your senses. You are not aware that your senses are picking up a circle of white with an image of man in it until you close your eyes and tilt your head back. How many times have you thought you knew what you saw and heard only to find out later that what you thought you saw and heard was not what really happened. Our senses play tricks on us and it is important for us to validate, check out, and authenticate our perceptions of people, places, things, problems, conflicts, and decisions before we take actions based on our perceptions.

When your dealing with problems, often times you can get so caught up with the forest that you loose perspective of the trees involved. It is imperative that you are totally awaken to all aspects of the problem which you are facing. Here is a picture of a natural setting. At the same time there are 11 human faces in the picture can you find them? If you are having problems finding them, then wake up to the fact that there are many aspects of problems you are solving which you are not picking up. Critical thinking requires you to put a face to the problem and to identify all the faces of the problem involved. If you had no problem picking out the 11 faces, then you have succeeded in training your self to be more acute to your perceptions thanks to your work on this material.

Lastly look at this book. Is the book looking towards you or away from you? When you are facing problems or decisions is your mind an open or closed book? Are you with it (the issue you are facing) or does it get away from you? To be effective in your life it is important to deal with your problems, issues, conflicts, and decisions head on. If you use all of your senses, are open, look at both sides of the issue, are analytical, identify and question your assumptions and stereotypes, brainstorm, think out of the box, and are organized in your approach to dealing with your issues, then you will be successful.

It is my hope that you will have learned some important lessons by reviewing this site. You cannot always trust your initial perceptions because your brain has not caught up with all that it is decoding and translating. So please, slow down, be rational, test out your assumptions, let go of your stereotypes, and be open to reality the way it really is rather than the way you suspect or perceive it to be.

Click here to download the PowerPoint Presentation which accompanies this program.

Coping.org is a Public Service of James J. Messina, Ph.D. & Constance M. Messina, Ph.D., Email: jjmess@tampabay.rr.com ©1999-2007 James J. Messina, Ph.D. & Constance Messina, Ph.D. Note: Original materials on this site may be reproduced for your personal, educational, or noncommercial use as long as you credit the authors and website.