“About a picture”

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We've all heard of the phrase “A picture is worth a thousand words”. This is sometimes very true, but it all depends on the point of view that a person has when observing the actual picture. A good example of this is the Rorschach inkblot test, where patients are shown a distorted image that is painted using ink, and they are asked what they think the image is of. This a perception test and it’s used to see how people perceive different images. The same concept may be applied to a picture, because different people apply different life experiences that can serve as a bias or as an inspiration for what they are seeing in the image.

Take this image for example, if different people are asked to describe the image people will probably have a very different opinion on what they see beyond the obvious detail of the flower. This occurs because everyone has a different type of perception, especially when what you see in the image is not a usual object or has unusual colors or shapes. Instead of thinking about the ordinary, and what you’re used to, you try to make up different traits that you can attribute to the image.

One cool activity that I did once in my 11^th grade AP psych class was an awareness test. During this test you were asked to perform a task (to count the amount of passes that a few players make while playing basketball) but then you’re asked if you saw a background activity, and the results are surprising. In fact, I will leave the video for you to watch, it’s really interesting and I can almost guarantee that laughter will come out at the end of the video. So maybe a picture is worth a thousand words, you just have to choose the words according to your previous experiences.