Why Don’t People See the Obvious?

It can be extraordinarily frustrating when people fail to see the obvious. Why can’t they perceive what’s right in front of them? Why can’t they see what’s real and true?

Photo by Anne Kearney

When people don’t see what’s so obvious to you, it’s tempting to think that they are actively and selectively closing their eyes to reality or are, in fact, seeing the obvious but pretending not to. Sometimes these things are true. There are people who have psychological disorders that give them a particularly warped view of the world and of themselves. There are others who intentionally distort the truth or just make things up in an attempt to wield more power, influence people, or simply to make money.

But outside of these extremes there is a more pervasive reason for failing to see what’s obvious – the obvious exists not in the world but in the brain. Our perceptions are not direct imprints. They are models that our brains build to represent things in the world. The complexities of how our brains take in and process information means that my “obvious” and your “obvious” may be completely different.

Do You See What I See?

I recently went hiking with my husband and daughter in Spain’s Picos de Europa. On the second day, after a nearly 1000-meter elevation gain, we were rewarded with a stunning view, including a large craggy rock formation typical of the region’s landscape. My daughter pointed and said, “Look at that, it’s a sheep head!” just as I was about to say, “Look at that, it’s an elephant!”

My husband also saw a sheep. I couldn’t see it until after careful explanation about ear and mouth placement. Even then, I had to really focus to keep it in my mind and the moment I relaxed, the elephant took over – after all, it was so much more obvious.

A craggy rock formation, a sheep, an elephant … what do you see? (Photos by Anne Kearney)

We didn’t continue on our hike until I had seen the sheep and I had made sure the others could see the elephant. In retrospect, it seemed oddly vital to us that everyone else could see what we saw. Why was this so important?

Being effective in the world depends on having a useful understanding of how it works. We not only want a coherent world view, but we want that world view to be shared – particularly by people in our tribe. This shared perspective validates our own view and also provides common and predictable ground upon which to interact with others.

But the experience in the mountains is a reminder that our world view – and in fact all perception – is a cognitive construction.

The Legoland of Perception

Our world view is a collection of models and stories, usually somewhat grounded in reality, that we continually build and refine. Although perception feels like we are directly experiencing what is objectively true about the world, our brains are actually collecting sensations, filtering them through a cognitive sieve created from past experience and expectation, and then constructing a model from a conceptual Lego set that includes the incoming sensations but also the collection of our experiences, knowledge, beliefs, emotions, and values.

In fact, the set of things that even have a chance of making it to our perceptual processing system is only a small fraction of what is out in the world. We pay attention to what we’re interested in, what we’ve learned is important, what the people we trust tell us is important, and what we expect to see. Our brains have learned to ignore much of the rest. It may be that my husband and daughter were primed to see something like a sheep in the rock formation because we had seen several herds of Cantabrian chamois (a type of mountain goat) on the hike up. I can’t even hazard a guess for why my brain constructed an elephant instead.

When it comes to perceiving things that are more abstract than animals – the causes of and solutions to a problem at work, for example – the number of cognitive interpretations increases manyfold. The perception of these more abstract concepts takes place much higher up the cognitive processing chain than visual perception. The greater number of processing stages means that there are more opportunities for variability in the way that the brain combines elements to arrive at a unified understanding – an understanding that despite all this processing can feel obvious after the fact.

Construction, Misalignment, and Fracture

Most of our brain’s processing happens beneath the surface so that we’re often unaware of the hard work that goes into building perception and understanding. Our perception can feel so effortless and obvious that we are thrown for a loop when another seemingly sane person sees things differently.

When it comes to rock formations, the ramifications of these differences are trivial. But when it comes to perceptions that carry more weight in terms of how we view the world, these differences can cause friendships, families, and cultures to fracture. They can also provide a leverage point for those who would further divide people through fear and hate.

What’s the solution for dealing with problems of the obvious? Strategies for sharing one’s understanding and for consensus building are important. But these strategies are most effective when we first acknowledge that people’s perceptions may legitimately differ. Everyone is blinded, to some extent, by their own sense of the obvious.

The Elephant In the Room

The next time you are interacting with others and asking yourself how they could possibly be missing the elephant in the room (or in the rocks), consider the following: Perhaps they are seeing a sheep instead.

Before you try to make people see what you see or dismiss them altogether, think about what you can do to set aside your own biases and preconceptions and try to see what others see.

How can you work to un-see your own obvious? What can you do to help other people un-see?

Taking the time to set aside the obvious and explore the rocks together may, in the long run, be the most productive way to build common ground.

Anne Kearney is an artist and writer living in Barcelona, Spain. Her writing and artwork are inspired by her decades of experience as an environmental psychologist working for universities, non-profits and NASA. She has a B.A. in Cognitive Science from Stanford University, and a M.S. in Resource Policy and Behavior and Ph.D. in Environmental Psychology from the University of Michigan.