Biases
The human senses do not function like a video camcorder, impartially recording all observations. Human perception occurs by a complex, unconscious process of abstraction, in which certain details of the incoming sense data are noticed and remembered, and the rest forgotten. What is kept and what is thrown away depends on an internal model or representation of the world that is built up over our entire lives. The data is fitted into this model. Later when we remember events, gaps in our memory may even be filled by "plausible" data our mind makes up to fit the model.
How much attention the various perceived data are given depends on an internal value system, which judges how important it is to us. Thus two people can view the same event and come away with entirely different perceptions of it, even disagreeing about simple facts. This is why eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable.
Several of the more important ways observations can be affected by human psychology are given below.
Read more about this topic: Observation
Famous quotes containing the word biases:
“A critic is a bundle of biases held loosely together by a sense of taste.”
—Whitney Balliet (b. 1926)