“It’s what you make of it that counts.” I’m sure we’ve heard this expression so many times in regards to colleges, experiences, and other choice events that may not always go our way. Even though this cliche seems like a cop-out for someone who doesn’t know how to properly console you, there is a lot of truth behind it. Our perceptions control how we appreciate (or don’t) our lives.
Daniel Kahneman, the founder of behavioral economics, illustrated this concept in a beautifully stunning manner: by tracking the pain in colonoscopy patients. He measured both the patients’ reported pain as the procedure occurred and their reported pain after the procedure has ended. He found that people perceived worse experiences when their colonoscopy ended on a high spike of pain, even if they had had relatively no pain up until then. Kahneman tried on more thing with this experiment, too. After that big spike of pain where the procedure would normally have ended, Kahneman had the doctors extend the colonoscopy’s duration. This extended time added just small levels of pain. So what happened?
When the operation was over, the patients perceived the extended colonoscopy as a less painful experience than the colonoscopy ending in a pain spike, even though they received that pain spike and additional pain. The only difference was that the patients who ended with the small amounts of pain remember it ending relatively painlessly, so their perceptions were drastically different from those who received overall less painful procedures. This tells us that our perception of the world around us has powerful implications regarding how we react, consciously and subconsciously, to the events in our lives.
College life also illustrates the power of perceptions well. Though the tier of a college can determine the quality of an education you receive, most of the learning and experiences you will have will by dictated by how you view your college. If you believe you will have a good time and can make the best of your college experience, then you will seek out the experiences and educational opportunities that mean the most to you and have an amazing, immersive time. If, however, you go into a college thinking, “man, this wasn’t even in my top three choices, this is going to suck!”...well, it might suck. Not because of the college though, because of your attitude towards it.*
Even the types of phrasings in popular expressions, like “coming out of the closet,” contain subtle hints as to how society perceives certain kinds of action. Though coming out is thankfully more celebrated and acceptable than it previously was, the phrase “coming out” still bothers me. Coming out of a closet (or I guess anything else) sounds like something one would be ashamed to do—they must have gone to the closet to hide their shame from the people enjoying life outside. Even though we may not realize it, phrasings like the shameful “coming out” impart negative connotations on those who do it and our attitude towards homosexuality. If we wanted to empower those who are publicly announcing their orientation, as we should, we need to use an expression that does not carry negative connotations. Maybe our new word for that should be “sharing.” Yeah Johnny? He shared with me about two months ago. Sharing is something that is done on an even field—one person has information that they willingly choose to divulge with another. “Coming out” puts the person who is already vulnerable on a psychologically lower level than the rest of society even before they begin that often arduous process.
It doesn’t seem like it, but our perceptions play a bigger role in our lives than we realize. They shape our views of important issues and can dictate our beliefs. They can be easily manipulated, however, for good and for bad. I want to impart to you the power that perceptions play in our daily lives, and get you to think about how you once perceived something big in your life—and if you could have viewed for better or for worse.
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*I think this perception applies mainly to freshman who were incessantly told throughout high school that they need to attend the best schools, get the best degree, etc. I think that as people progress through college, they start to see how it is an all-around great opportunity regardless of where they went. I talked about this in a previous post: http://moderatelyunbiased.blogspot.com/2013/11/more-thoughts-on-education-our-culture.html
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