Individual Perception and Reality - Study of Human Psychology

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The study of human psychology has historically tended to lay a lot of emphasis on the negatives rather than the positives. Mental health practitioners as well as scholars have been found to focus their energies on the many forms of psychological distress, depression, schizophrenia among others. In recent times, however, there has been an interdisciplinary cohort of scholars, researchers and psychologists who have focused their abilities and resources on human happiness. One of them is Daniel Gilbert, who is a social psychology professor at Harvard University. He is only one of the few who have realized that psychology is not about crazy people, but about all of us. In his essay, “immune to reality”, he tries to help his audience understand the inaccurate emotions in which they connect the present to the future, and also the biases through which the past is then looked at.

Daniel Gilbert, in his essay “immune to reality”, tackles the unending myths that surround human happiness. These include the human capacity to experience it if one has a significant disability, if one suffers from a humiliating fall from grace or is incarcerated. He goes on to deconstruct two big myths about the role that money as well as parenthood plays in human happiness. Existing scientific evidence proves that being rich does not increase human happiness, and neither does being a parent. Daniel Gilbert, however, describes these as false beliefs that are super-replicating, maintained by humanity with a view to maintaining the status quo.

Perception can simply be defined as the process by which human beings interpret and organize their sensory impressions with a view to giving a definite meaning to their environment. Each and every human being has his own, distinct image of how to see the real world. Perception essentially generates individual behavioral responses to specific situations. It is the mental function that gives significance to natural stimuli such as color, sound, touch, smell, feel among others.

As unique as reality can be to each and every individual, so is perception. However, perception and reality are not one and the same thing, but they do indeed coincide in that they apply to each and every individuals’ life experiences as well as their beliefs. Reality is indeed a relatively fluid concept in that, what one sees as real is in essence defined by the structure of one’s beliefs. One’s version of what is real and what is not, is only their perception of it, not what is so.

For instance, two people are having a conversation. One person’s belief on relationships is relatively different to the second person’s belief structure and their thought process. This is normal, because what is

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