In my opinion we make up "reality" by the different meanings we give
to events and experiences that happen to us. Are there any scientific
expriments that prove this - e.g. a staged event in a psychology
lecture followed by questions on what just happened, or similar? A few
examples please with source references.

---

Request for Question Clarification by pafalafa-ga on 01 Jun 2005 08:59 PDT

dtnl42-ga,

The classic Japanese film Rashomon, explores this very question -- how
the reality of a single event looks from the very different
perspectives of the people involved.  If you haven't seen it, I highly
suggest finding a copy..it can be ordered at Amazon.com.


A psychology study from a few years ago explored the Rashomon of real life:


http://psyweb2.ucdavis.edu/labs/robins/lab/Rashomon.pdf

"Kurosawa?s classic film Rashomon vividly illustrates how the same
event?the rape of a woman and the murder of her husband by a
bandit?can be interpreted in dramatically different ways. In relating
the story to the police, the woman emphasizes the wickedness of the
bandit and her own virtuousness and helplessness in the situation. The
bandit, in contrast, contends that the woman encouraged him to kill
her husband and that he raped her because he was overcome by love. The
Rashomon story highlights a fundamental issue in the study of
interpersonal perception: Individuals often offer diverging accounts
of who did what and why..."


The study also says quite clearly that there is very little formal
research on this topic, so the above link may be more or less all
there is...at least as far as actual scientific work.

Have a look, and let me know what you think.  

paf

---

Request for Question Clarification by umiat-ga on 01 Jun 2005 09:17 PDT

Hello, dtnl42-ga!

I found some studies that might be applicable, but they are more
focused on perception and/or memory.


Different perceptions and realities for individuals watching the same
football game can be found in the following article:

"Selective Group Perception - They Saw a Game: A Case Study." Hastorf and Cantril.
http://www.age-of-the-sage.org/psychology/social/hastorf_cantril_saw_game.html

Excerpt:

"Albert Hastorf and Hadley Cantril - They Saw a Game: A Case Study
[Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 1954] interpreted their
experiment as evidence that "out of all the occurrences going on in
the environment, a person selects those that have some significance
for him from his own egocentric position in the total matrix", that
the game "actually was many different games" and that each version of
the events that transpired was just as "real" to a particular person
as other versions were to other people. In this study, the subjects'
perceptions were swayed by their motives. It shows how people
sometimes see what they want to see."

"Hastorf and Cantril conclude :: "In brief, the data here indicate
that there is no such 'thing' as a 'game' existing 'out there' in its
own right which people merely 'observe.' The game 'exists' for a
person and is experienced by him only insofar as certain happenings
have significances in terms of his purpose."


=


A number of brief descriptions of experiments involving differences in
perception among members of the same group can be found in the
following reference:

"Individual Differences, Purposes and Needs." Daniel Chandler. Visual
Perception 4. UWA Last modified: 12/22/2004.
http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Modules/MC10220/visper04.html


===

The following article explains various reasons why eyewitnesses to the
same event may perceive and remember the situation differently:

"Experiencing, Remembering and Reporting Events." Ralph Norman Haber
and Lyn Haber. University of California at Santa Cruz and University
of California at Riverside
http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:-TGmOBlYrc8J:www.humanfactorsconsultants.com/memory.rtf+experiment+and+eyewitness+see+same+event+differently&hl=en

Abstract:

"Human beings frequently describe from memory events they have
observed, and most people consider these descriptions to be accurate. 
However, scientific research on memory in the last few decades has
revealed that people's memories are often inaccurate.  These errors in
memory are systematic and are especially likely to occur for the kinds
of events that are reported in courtroom testimony: reports of
strangers performing brief, violent or unexpected acts that are
frightening to the observer/witness. We examine the research on
factors that affect the accuracy of initial observation, encoding and
remembering and forgetting such events...."

==

An exploration into whether "Own Race Bias" plays a part in perception
of events is explored in the following experiment:

"THE EFFECTS OF SAME-RACE BIAS ON MEMORY AND PERCEPTION Yuhan Dong,
Larry Kwon, George Lin, Katarina Madiraca, Ahmed Meleis, Elizabeth
Ortiz, Daphne Oz, Nilay Patel, Anam Qureshi, Patrick Rastelli, Dipal
Shah.
http://www.depts.drew.edu/govschl/GSS2003/gss03_final/Team5_final_paper.pdf 


"The accuracy of eyewitness identification and the effect of Own-Race
Bias (ORB) on subjects? ability to identify a suspect were examined in
a single experiment. Sixty-nine subjects viewed one of two videotapes
of a staged theft; in one videotape, the perpetrator was Caucasian,
and in the other, Asian. The subjects then attempted to identify the
perpetrator from a lineup. Data regarding the participants? racial
backgrounds and that of their friends? was collected through a
questionnaire and then analyzed. The effects of ORB were not evident
in the analysis of our data so several explanations for this lack of
substantiation were explored."



"How Events Are Reviewed Matters: Effects of varied focus on
eyewitness suggestibility." Lane S. M.; Mather M.; Villa D.; Morita S.
K. Memory & Cognition, 1 October 2001, vol. 29, no. 7, pp. 940-947(8)
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/psocpubs/mrc/2001/00000029/00000007/art00004

(You can access full document for free)

Abstract:

"Witnesses to a crime or an accident perceive that event only once,
but they are likely to think or talk about it multiple times. The way
in which they review the event may affect their later memory. In
particular, some types of review may increase suggestibility if the
witness has been exposed to post event misleading information. In
Experiment 1, participants viewed a videotaped crime and then received
false suggestions about the event. We found that participants who were
then asked to focus on specific details when reviewing the event were
more suggestible on a later source memory test than participants asked
to review the main points. The findings of Experiment 2 suggest that
this effect was not due to a criterion shift at test. These findings
indicate that the type of rehearsal engaged in after witnessing an
event can have important consequences for memory and, in particular,
suggestibility."

 
==

If you can use these as an answer to your question, please let me know.

umiat

---

Clarification of Question by dtnl42-ga on 01 Jun 2005 09:25 PDT

Those are great thanks

---

Request for Question Clarification by umiat-ga on 01 Jun 2005 09:27 PDT

Hi, dtnl42-ga!
 Did you want me to post the references as a formal answer? I am not
sure whose references you are referring to in your clarification?
umiat

---

Request for Question Clarification by pafalafa-ga on 01 Jun 2005 09:28 PDT

I'm glad to hear that you appear to have gotten what you were after
(assuming that my reality is close enough to yours to warrant coming
to such a conclusion!)

Since some very excellent materials were added to my meager one-study
offering, I suggest that umiat-ga post a formal answer to your
question.

paf

---

Request for Question Clarification by omnivorous-ga on 01 Jun 2005 09:29 PDT

DTNL42 --

It appears that Umiat-GA has answered your question but there's one
other element that you may wish to consider -- memory and time.  My
wife attending a medical training session a few years ago that had two
different taped accounts of a story, and of course they were very
different accounts.  But the surprise came when the researcher
indicated that it was the same story told by the SAME PERSON 10 years
apart.

The moral: time and subsequent events shape what is remembered and emphasized.

You may wish to include (or exclude) this factor from your research. 
And I'm sure that researchers would gladly tackle the memory factor as
a separate question, should you wish.

Best regards,

Omnivorous-GA

Hello, dtnl42!

 Thank you for accepting my references as a formal answer. I have
added a few more below, under Additional References, although they go
off in a slightly different direction.

 While there are numerous references to the fact the humans react
differently to the same events, the problem is finding the staged
experiments to back up the statements! I was sure there would be case
studies on different individual reactions to the same traumatic
events, or individualized perceptions of twins to the same
circumstances - or even positive vs. negative reactions of survivors
to the same violent crime or terrorist activity - but I could not find
the research.

 If you would like to refine your research further in a follow-up
question, I would be happy to pursue this in another direction.

==


To recap my earlier references:

Different perceptions and realities for individuals watching the same
football game can be found in the following article:

"Selective Group Perception - They Saw a Game: A Case Study." Hastorf and Cantril.
http://www.age-of-the-sage.org/psychology/social/hastorf_cantril_saw_game.html


=

A number of brief descriptions of experiments involving differences in
perception among members of the same group can be found in the
following reference:

"Individual Differences, Purposes and Needs." Daniel Chandler. Visual
Perception 4. UWA. Last modified: 12/22/2004.
http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Modules/MC10220/visper04.html


===

The following article explains various reasons why eyewitnesses to the
same event may perceive and remember the situation differently:

"Experiencing, Remembering and Reporting Events." Ralph Norman Haber
and Lyn Haber. University of California at Santa Cruz and University
of California at Riverside
http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:-TGmOBlYrc8J:www.humanfactorsconsultants.com/memory.rtf+experiment+and+eyewitness+see+same+event+differently&hl=en


==

An exploration into whether "Own Race Bias" plays a part in perception
of events is explored in the following experiment:

"THE EFFECTS OF SAME-RACE BIAS ON MEMORY AND PERCEPTION Yuhan Dong,
Larry Kwon, George Lin, Katarina Madiraca, Ahmed Meleis, Elizabeth
Ortiz, Daphne Oz, Nilay Patel, Anam Qureshi, Patrick Rastelli, Dipal
Shah.
http://www.depts.drew.edu/govschl/GSS2003/gss03_final/Team5_final_paper.pdf 


=

"How Events Are Reviewed Matters: Effects of varied focus on
eyewitness suggestibility." Lane S. M.; Mather M.; Villa D.; Morita S.
K. Memory & Cognition, 1 October 2001, vol. 29, no. 7, pp. 940-947(8)
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/psocpubs/mrc/2001/00000029/00000007/art00004

(You can access full document for free)




SOME ADDITIONAL MATERIAL
=========================

How emotion and memory affect perception of events:


Excerpt from "MEMORIES: Constructed, Confused and Confabulated," by
Robert Novella. The New England Journal of Skepticism Vol. 1 Issue 3
(Summer '98)
http://www.theness.com/articles/memory-nejs0103.html


"Memories are often contaminated or distorted by information acquired
after an event. This so called post-event-information can come from
suggestions or facts that are unconsciously integrated into the
original memories. Once this is done the memories form a cohesive
story that is impossible to separate into its true and false
components. Dr. Elizabeth Loftus describes in her book The Myth of
Repressed Memory experiments in which subjects were exposed to a film
of a bank robbery followed by a television account of the event that
contained erroneous details. Many of the subjects incorporated the
incorrect details into their memory of the robbery and steadfastly
refused to believe that they could be wrong. Loftus has performed
hundreds of similar experiments with thousands of people and claims
that post event information has been clearly shown to have an
influence on memories (Loftus, 1996). As a practical application of
this information, police officers should never show a single suspect?s
photo to the victim of a crime. If this individual is then picked out
of a line up, it would be difficult to determine if the victim is
remembering the assailant or the person in the photograph."

"Emotions can have an effect in creating and recalling memories.
Emotions felt as we recall an event can reshape memories, imbuing them
with our current emotional state even though the original memory had
no trace of the emotion. This is the opposite of attempting to lift
your mood by remembering pleasant past experiences. Intense emotional
reactions to memories do not necessarily mean that they are accurate,
it just means that there is a greater likelihood that we will perceive
them to be true. (Ofshe, Watters, 1994)"


==


Also read "How Eyewitnesses Talk about Events: Implications for
Memory," by Elizabeth J. Marsh, Barbara Tversky and Michael Hutson.
http://www-psych.stanford.edu/~bt/memory/papers/marsh-tversky-hutson_eyewitness.pdf


==


The way "memory selection" is used to remember specific situations is
another aspect of how individual reality and meaning is ascribed to an
event:


Read "CAS Research project 2003-2004 - Towards a comprehensive model
of human memory, with special reference to eyewitness testimony." 
Tore Helstrup & Svein Magnussen. Department of Psychology, University
of Oslo.
http://www.cas.uio.no/Groups/HM0304/Project.pdf

"The factual accuracy of an eyewitness report depends first of all on
how the target information was perceptually registered. There is a
large research literature showing that the processing of information
for focal attention (conscious perception) depends on capacity limited
processes of attention and mechanisms of information selection
(Pashler, 1998). These mechanisms are coupled to information
processing in short-term memory and, thus, to declarative memory. A
central issue is the unitary versus multiple-factor account of the
so-called working memory system (Baddeley, 1983), but all current
models of attention and short-term memory agree that system
constraints imply severe capacity and resource limitations on ongoing
information processing. The result is information selection. In
eyewitness contexts, one important question is how such selection may
lead to distorted memory reports. Personality factors like cognitive
styles have been found to affect the selection and processing of
information (Sternberg, 1997), mood and emotion likewise (Kaufmann &
Vosburg, 1997). Evidence suggests, for instance, that emotional stress
in forensic situations leads to a narrowed but reliable attentional
focus to the expense ofperipheral information (Christianson, 1992)."


==


I hope you can use these references to your advantage!


Sincerely,


umiat


Search Strategy

two people perceive same event differently
experiments AND two people perceive same event differently
do twins see the same event differently?
ascribing different meanings to the same event  
experiments AND different meanings ascribed to a staged event
experiments AND different emotions OR reactions to a staged event
research studies on individual perception to the same event
joint interviews AND different perception of same event
social situation elicit different reactions
why individuals react differently to the same event
Research AND two people react differently to same event

and many more...

All very interesting!  It strongly suggests that if one could be a
court witness that one should sit down and record one's recollection
of the situation before talking to anyone about it, and review it for
obvious inconsistancies and add question marks where even an immediate
review shows doubtful points, and then limit talk about it.  Anything
we say, we tend to believe, want to be consistant about, although we
originally may have recognized that we were "rising to the occasion"
to answer someone's question, rather than wanting to admit that we
couldn't really recall a detail, especially one that at that point
seemed harmlessly insignificant.

There must be (should be) somewhere instructions for witnesses.   ...?

Anyway, thanks again, all.

I agree that memories can be VERY suspect. I have an extremely clear
memory of my first arrival at university, including the details of
turning into the parking lot and the location of buildings and trees.
The only problem is, it is all wrong: the position of the parking lot,
etc. is nothing like my memory. Whether I have a totally false memory,
or I have confused it with another event i don't know. I am sure that
I would be very suspicious of anyones eyewitness account, no matter
how certain they are of their recollections.

Maybe a search for Jung + Synchronicity, or Synchronism will yield you
some psychological answers.

Jung (1973a) writes:

I chose this term because the simultaneous occurrence of two
meaningfully but not causally connected events seemed to me an
essential criterion. I am therefore using the general concept of
synchronicity in the special sense of a coincidence in time of two or
more causally unrelated events which have the same or a similar
meaning, in contrast to ?synchronism,? which simply means the
simultaneous occurrence of two events. Synchronicity therefore means
the simultaneous occurrence of a certain psychic state with one or
more external events which appear as meaningful parallels to the
momentary subjective state--and, in certain cases, vice versa.?  (p.
25)