填空题
Most of us assume that our eyes send an accurate copy of the external world along nerve pathways to the brain, where it is projected on a kind of screen. Yet there is a good deal of evidence that our impressions are not simply mental photographs of what is going on "out there." Rather, our perceptions are filtered through the lens of our previous experiences, attitudes and beliefs. This is true of even the simplest kinds of perception. For example, when a car appears on the 1 your eyes send an image of a miniature automobile to your 2 , an image that grows larger as the car approaches. What you 3 , however, is a normal-sized car, because you know that cars do not 4 and contract. If the car is yours and you know it"s 5 , you will perceive it as blue whether it"s in bright sunlight, dark shadow, or under a yellow 6 .
In much the same way, we adjust our social perceptions to 7 what we know—or think we know. An old 8 illustrates this. A man and his son are in an accident. The 9 is killed; the boy is rushed to the hospital for emergency 10 . The surgeon comes into the operating room, looks at the boy, and 11 , "I can"t operate. That"s my son." Who is the surgeon? The boy"s mother. Many people are 12 by this riddle because they expect a doctor (especially a surgeon) to be a 13 .
All of us have this tendency to interpret communications in the 14 of our own ideas and beliefs. Sometimes, different people may 15 different messages in the same communication. Take the TV 16 All in the Family . Students viewers who had been identified 17 highly prejudiced saw the main character, a bigoted white man 18 Archie Bunker, as a likeable grouch who won most of his 19 with members of his family. Students who were low in prejudice thought 20 Archie lost these arguments and that the whole point of the show was to ridicule his prejudices.
In short, our perceptions of the social world are anything but accurate copies of what is going on outside. We pick and choose, according to our expectations, and we fit what we see into a mental image of reality which we have already formed. In large part, what we "see" is determined by where we stand in the social system. Ask a fourth-grader, a teacher, a principal, a janitor, and a parent to describe the same school, and you will get five different pictures. Each has different information, and each looks at the same "facts" in a different way. Ask a man and wife to describe their marriage, and you might not know they were talking about the same family. "His" marriage and "her" marriage may be quite different. What is common sense to a man may be nonsense to a woman!