The Impact of Expectations on Experience

Dare to believe in the reality of your assumption and watch the world play its part relative to its fulfillment. ~ Neville Goddard

Sometimes our expectations are on target, but sometimes they conflate the negative. Other times they make us blind to our own errors. Let’s take a look at the practical ways this can be a problem and the biological reason our brains work this way.

We see what we want to see

An article in Psychology Today explains that motivational bias changes the way we view objects and perhaps people, as well. In one experiment, participants were to identify whether a slide reflected a greater portion of a scene or a face. The participants knew their fee would increase as the face count went up, and–shocker–they saw more slides that contained a greater percentage of faces.

Then there’s this from NIH’s PubMed Central: ” …experiments in visual psychology have revealed that the brain will often construct sensations that override the visual input if the brain judges that the latter is too improbable.” That is, our brains fill in the blanks for us as though we can’t believe our lying eyes. Maybe we can’t. The article went on to describe studies where images were photoshopped to reflect two conflicting combinations. The retinas, when shown the images separately, alternated the transmission to the brain. Yes, it confused me, too. The point is that we don’t, actually, see exactly what’s in front of us. Sometimes our wiring intervenes. Sometimes our preconceived notions take over.

It's science!

Turns out our brains do not simply interpret. That 3 lbs (+/-) is constantly at work, predicting what will happen next and providing a probable picture, as mentioned above and corroborated by the Neuroscience School site. We build our perceptions through experiences. Note I’m not saying our perception is our reality. It is only what we feel, and we can change that if we choose. The article’s suggestions follow, summarized according to my understanding:

Awareness is key. What we think we see may not be entirely accurate.
Self-reflection can go a long way to moderating our filters. That is, our friends may indeed have flaws and our nemesis may have good qualities we simply struggle to acknowledge.
Our motivations alter our views. Perhaps we can learn to monitor our decision-making process and alert ourselves to whether there’s a thumb on the scales.
Put the slo-mo on judgment. Maybe our first impressions aren’t the be-all, end-all. Maybe we need to allow our internal jury to stew awhile.

Easy to say. Harder to do. I know. Why is it that those gray cells, dynamos that they are, can’t police the bodies they’re controlling? Can’t halt the errant impulses? Google couldn’t help me with that one, exactly. Multiple sites* did indicate that the emotional system is faster than the reflective one. That could be it. *One of these is Calm. Figures.

Expectation to Experience

Here’s a story I heard a long time ago. I don’t remember from whom, or who the author might be, but it packs a lot of wisdom in a few words. It went something like this:

A story is told of a gas station attendant who, when asked by newcomers what to expect in his town, questioned them about what the people were like in the town they moved from.

“Oh, those people—ornery, mean, and dishonest. I couldn’t wait to get away from there.”

The attendant replies, “I expect you’ll find the same thing here.”

The next car pulls up with the same question, and the attendant asked the occupants what their experience was in their hometown.

They replied, “Oh, everyone was kind, decent, and honest.”

The gas station attendant assured them that that’s exactly what they would find in their new home as well.

This is why I need another pair of eyes to look at my large projects. That’s the only way to make sure most of the errors are caught. It’s why I look at my posts every week and still manage to find a typo or poor sentence construction on an already-published item. I know how to spell and I know I know how to spell, so why should there be a problem? I expect to see appropriate punctuation and good grammar, and that’s what I see, but that isn’t always what’s there on the page.

In like manner, if we are looking for a negative experience–a rude clerk, an unfriendly stranger, an uncooperative colleague–we will likely find one. They’re all over the place, but the good stuff is, too. Let’s look for that.