Perspective – it is a term often thrown around when faced with a difficult or challenging situation. “It’s all a matter of perspective”, “you just need to change your perspective and you’ll feel better”, “that’s your perspective, it’s not what actually happened” is what well-meaning friends and family members advice when a situation appears to be out of control, we feel stressed and confusions arise in the mind.
What is perspective? Why does it appear to be something so elusive that it must be cultivated, maintained or changed depending on the situation? These are some of the concepts that we shall explore in this article.
The term perspective is generally used to imply perception, a person’s view of an event. Perception can be defined as the ability to capture, process and actively make sense of the information that our senses receive (CogniFit, N.D.).
Any person’s perception of an event is typically made up of a number of different factors. Some of these include – the culture and society they live in, social norms, rules and regulations, their own past experiences, their unique personality and individual capacity to absorb and retain information in order to respond appropriately to different situations.
While it is thus, possible for members of a common group or society to have similar outlooks or perspectives, it is also very much the case that within a particular group or society individual differences in perspectives mutually co-exist. For example, while the people from the state of Kerala share the same language and food, even within the state there are differences in religious beliefs and political ideologies, hence it is also the state with the most frequent protests in India.
Within psychology also, there are different approaches and views to explain the functioning of human behaviour – psychodynamic theories which focus on the significant impact of childhood experiences in shaping adult human behaviour and humanistic perspectives which focus on the study of the whole person through an existential framework (McLeod, 2013). This highlights a key point about perspective – there is never one fixed way of approaching a situation or discussing a topic.
When we are in any given situation, we generally focus our attention on specific parts of our environment as it allows us to pay attention to what is necessary, filtering out other background information in the process. This is a psychological phenomenon known as change blindness (Cherry, 2019).
Change blindness is a fairly common phenomenon which we all experience in our day-to-day life. If we are not filtering out unnecessary information, we cannot focus on the task at hand. Individual differences in perception only become an issue when we fail to attend to what is necessary or when the intent of an action is misunderstood, misinterpreted or taken out of context.
For example, while someone may have a habit of saying thank you to express appreciation and gratitude, someone else might not say thank you at all, but instead performs acts of kindness in return. Issues arise when we judge someone as being pretentious for saying thank you a lot or assume the other person is ungrateful for not verbally expressing their appreciation. In both cases, the event taking place is the same. It is the identification of our own beliefs and value systems with it that lead to our experience of the event.
Insistence on one particular way of looking at a situation, one particular way of doing things and one particular way of responding robs us of the beauty of diverse expressions of the human spirit. This is not to say that we make excuses for our behaviour when acting in ways that may be perceived as rude or inappropriate to others, even though that may not be our intention.
For example, it is perfectly acceptable in British culture for young students to go out drinking in the evenings as a regular social activity, whereas the drinking culture is largely frowned upon in India as it represents disobedience and recklessness amongst the youth. When interacting with others it then becomes necessary to educate ourselves on what becomes appropriate based on the social context in which we place ourselves.
Yet another example within Indian culture is the story of Arjuna in the first chapter of the Bhagavad Geeta, where he throws down his weapons in despair after declaring that it would be wrong to kill his family, relatives and dear ones on the opposing side of the battlefield citing several reasons in support of his argument. Here, Arjuna completely ignores the series of events that had led to a battle between the Pandavas and Kauravas becoming inevitable, with one side representing good and the other side representing evil.
In such a scenario, the individual must take into account the bigger social, ethical, moral and cultural context in which they find themselves, as we are constantly influencing and are being influenced by our environment. Arjuna’s initial inability to take into account the larger contextual factors of his predicament is also an example of change blindness.
Behaviour regulation through adaptability then becomes an integral part of the process of learning to cultivate and shift perspectives to live life in a meaningful way. It is also important to acknowledge that making the best possible decisions in a changing and unpredictable environment is a massive task. This requires both learning from past experience as well as anticipating what might occur under previously unencountered circumstances.
Neuroplasticity is the process through which these changes in the brain take place in the face of environmental demands. Neuroplasticity in an individual is dependent upon their level of openness to change. As individuals grow and mature with age, they gain rich and vast life experiences which in turn can develop into resistance to change, typically because by this time they have formed set habits to deal with a variety of situations. Even if habits at a later stage can be improved, it is a very human tendency that once we become comfortable with the way we do things we generally do not want to put ourselves in an uncomfortable situation that requires extra effort, unless forced to or it is absolutely required (Lourenco & Casey, 2013).
Teenagers on the other hand, are quite open to change as they are still in the process of growing up and discovering their identity. Adolescence in particular, is an adaptive period marked by transitioning away from the home and moving towards becoming independent adults. Having an environmentally sensitive system in place by parents and teachers can help to facilitate a smooth transition in this process.
For example, rewarding individuals for appropriate behaviour can make them work harder and perform better than no feedback or negative feedback being provided (Lourenco & Casey, 2013). Thus, it can be observed that adaptability and the ability to shift preconceived notions and perceptions about any event go hand in hand.
In conclusion, the diversity that comes with different perspectives is not to say that any one process or perspective is better than the other. Becoming aware of the factors that influence perspectives can enable us to have a better understanding of why different people respond to the same situation in different ways.
It also allows us to move away from rigid ways of thinking to become more flexible in consciously choosing and adapting our typical methods of thinking and responding according different situations and events that life presents us with.
References
Brown, J. (2012). Adaptable Decision-Making in the Brain. University of Iowa. Retrieved from: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120619225234.htm
Cherry, K. (2019). Why Change Blindness Happens to Us. VeryWellMind. Retrieved from: https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-change-blindness-2795010
CogniFit, (N.D.). Perception. Retrieved from: https://www.cognifit.com/perception
O’Regan, J. K. & Noë, A. (2001). A Sensorimotor Account of Vision and Visual Consciousness. Behavioural and Brain Sciences. (24) 939-1031.
Lourenco, F. & Casey, B. J. (2013). Adjusting Behaviour to Changing Environmental Demands With Development. Neuroscience and biobehavioural reviews, 37(9 Pt B), 2233–2242.
McLeod, S. A. (2013). Psychology Perspectives. Retrieved from: https://www.simplypsychology.org/perspective.html
