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Seeing the Same Events, But ‘Reading’ Them Differently

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Two individuals may look at the hilly terrain of Gettysburg’s Little Round Top battlefield, but may be take vastly different lessons from it.

We can be surprised when a friend describes a given event. If we attended the same event as well, it is not uncommon to conclude that our friend’s summary of it missed its meaning.

Most of us routinely function using what is sometimes called a “correspondence view of reality.”  This approach assumes that the material world offers up an endless parade of experiences that we take in and understand in more or less similar ways. The reality on view to all has certain reliable and corresponding meanings. At least that’s the problematic theory.

                                                       

What we notice–what sticks with us–comes from what is already in us as much as what the eye is capturing.  We are not cameras.  We “see” with our brains as much as our eyes

After decades as a rhetorical critic and analyst, I must say that I don’t see much evidence that details in the world we describe have much in common with what others believe to be present. We all know the experience of listening to a description of an event witnessed by ourselves and others, only to hear an account that misses what we thought were key defining features. There’s nothing new in this, but it’s a cautionary condition that ought to make us wary of the correspondence view.  It may seem to counteract familiar problems of “selective perception” or “confirmation bias:” (seeing what we want to see). One would think that what is in front of our eyes commands the same cognitive processes. If it were only so. Of course artificial intelligence can now fabricate convincing images and videos. But they are mediated, or witnessed second hand, opening up what has become a huge problem about their veracity. For our purposes here let’s stay with original and personal experience.  Even here, what we notice–what sticks with us–comes from what is already in us as much as what the eye was capturing.  We are not cameras.  We see with our brains as much as our eyes. We use even raw experience to interprete the world as it is presented.

Still, there are surprisingly different understandings that play out in all kinds of prosaic ways: a photograph we loved that others disliked, the often surprising “lessons” that individuals take away from a story about interpersonal conflict, or what was really going on with that strange conversation with a friend.

I was reminded of this in a scene laid out in Lawrence Wright’s book on the negotiations that led to the historic Camp David Accords. Thirteen Days in September documents the 1978 efforts of President Jimmy Carter to find a way out of the chronic Arab/Israeli impasse, working with Egypt’s Anwar Sadat (left) and Israel’s Menachem Begin. The President put everything else on hold in Washington to spend time with these men at Camp David in the Maryland mountains. Days passed as these three leaders looked for a way around their considerable differences. But what a statesmanlike idea to bring these factions together in the comparative isolation of the Maryland mountains.

Going to Camp David was only his first move. When the talks seemed to be irrevocably breaking down, Carter decided to pack up his entourage for a quick side-trip to the town of Gettysburg Pennsylvania, not far from the presidential retreat. He reasoned that perhaps a look at the bloody American fratricide that occurred on the lush hills surrounding the small town would add some needed urgency to the talks. In retrospect, that idea counts as one of the great acts of modern presidential leadership. Currently, President Trump shows the same desire to make peace in various hot spots, but he lacks the other-awareness to pull it off. By contrast, Sadat and Begin really liked the evident patience and generousity of Carter that Trump sorely lacks.

Over three days in 1863 the Confederate and Union armies saw 8,000 of their members slain and 50,000 gravely wounded. This was carnage on the scale of the 1967 Arab-Israeli Six Day War. Begin and Sadat took all of this in, with detailed narratives provided by Carter and the local National Park staff. But as Wright notes, the two old warriors saw vastly different Gettysburgs.

Known for his peace-making instincts, Sadat seemed fascinated by the strategies of the generals leading the two warring armies. The timing of attacks and counterattacks are usually at the center of most narratives about this key battleground. But to Carter’s surprise it was Begin, the old guerrilla fighter, who was sobered by the magnitude of the carnage, and especially the words of President Lincoln’s short address at the site. The Israeli leader interpreted the speech as a call for political leadership to rise above the brutal factionalism of civil war. Begin saw Gettysburg as a reminder of the horrible price that strife between neighbors can cause. Could the same magic work on the current Israeli Prime Minister?

Against the simpler correspondence view of reality that we too often assume, communication analysis needs something which can be called a phenomenological view of reality. The phenomenologist tends to accept the likelihood that experience is individual rather than collective, and  that the material worlds we share are still going to produce separate and unique understandings. Our personal values and biographies are likely to feed into interpretations of events that are specific, distinct, and often exclusive to us. Meaning is thus not a matter of consensus among strangers, but a mixture of ineffable and lifelong influences. In simple terms, two individuals may look at the hilly terrain of Gettysburg’s Little Round Top, but may be taking vastly different lessons from it.

We Hear What We Need to Hear

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                                    Wikipedia.org

This pattern of misperception is actually so common that if all of us drove cars about as poorly as we listen to others, our roadways would be strewn with wreckage.

We all have had the experience.  We are explaining a piece of our world to another, and the other person seems to be listening.  But their response indicates that they have mostly missed our point.  Instead of a reasonably accurate rendering of our thoughts, their comments reveal that they are projecting what they want to believe about us. For example, you may be talking about the challenges of your job, while a listener–for whatever reasons– may need to hear that you dislike your work. Or you tell them about your first visit to a novel new destination. And the most you can conclude from their response is that they need to hear that the site of the visit is overrated. At the end of such conversations we often walk away puzzled, perhaps concluding that the listener already had a mental map of us that they needed to confirm. This pattern of misperception is actually so common that if all of us drove cars as poorly as we listen to others, our roadways would be strewn with wreckage.

 To be sure, we can be unclear or ambiguous. “That’s not what I meant” ranks with “hello” as a well-worn locution. But sometimes the listener has seemingly willed their own preconceptions on to our rhetoric.  And it’s interesting to ponder why.

One explanation for this kind of selective perception is that conversation is mostly a process for seeking the familiar. This motive to retain what we already know is sometimes known as  “motivated reasoning” or “confirmation bias,” both representing the idea that we have the urge to place incoming information in a familiar map that we have already worked out.

Beyond the obvious economy of reverting to a well-traveled neural pathway, other reasons are possible:  Envy? Maybe the guilty comfort that comes with knowing that another person’s life is going less well than our own?  And there’s more.

We all construct fantasy themes about others that fill in the unknown gaps of their personal biographies.  In communication terms, fantasizing is not a mental health problem, but the natural result of the inductive reasoning we must do to create a more complete picture of another. Psychologists focused on social intelligence sometimes call this “theory of mind,” meaning that humans make estimates of others’ probable mental states based on the circumstantial evidence of prior experience. Add in the projection of the listener’s values onto the details of our life, and it’s easy to understand how we hear responses that can clearly puzzle us. As a general rule, any subject’s actions cannot help but be filtered through the receiver’s perceptions.

Put all of this together and we have an accumulating library of biographies with separate volumes for virtually every relative, friend, coworker and celebrity who is part of our cognitive world. As with any library, one of its rewards is the chance to revisit the familiar.

When things are off base enough you may be tempted to tell an interpreter of your own life that can you can’t recognize yourself from their descriptions.  Fair enough.  My guess is that we begin to offer a correctives to others by our fifth year.  It’s the birthright of every person to freely assert their uniqueness, and sometimes to remind interlocuteurs that they’ve missed the point. Such is the nature of rhetoric that persons who are ostensibly mirroring our ideas may really be saying more about  themselves.

Comments: woodward@tcnj.edu