What do you see when you look at this painting?
If you are not interested in art, you will not understand what the painting is about at first look, like me.
This painting is Picasso's one of the reproductions of Las Meninas (Ladies in Waiting - 1957), the original is below...
Famous Spanish artist Velazquez - 1656 - shows the snapshot of his study of King Philip and his wife's painting. You can see Velazquez on the left and the king and wife in the mirror at the back (they look at the scene from where we look).
Velazquez and Picasso's these beautiful paintings show as the same scene from their point of views and styles. These paintings are shown in communication and personal behavior classes as examples of how people perceive and translate differently the same events.
I also remember more examples from these classes.. For example, five people are selected, while four of them are invited outside, one of them is shown a photo. So, the educator wants him to describe the photo to one of the people outside and every person describes what they understand from one to another. As a result, when we come to the fifth person we see that the description of the photo - the information - is very very different from the original photograph.
Addition to these, in 1917 related to his researches, English psychologist Frederick Bartlett, proposes that memory not only collects the small facts about a real event but, rebuilds it. According to him, every remembering is writing the past again. Also, beginning from 1970s, the researches of another psychologist Elizaeth Loftus, support Bartlett. As a result, we understand that, people generally tend to remember the good events of the past and control the bad memories. Today, new therapy techniques, memory improvement methodologies and medicine are developed about these issues. In summary, past is never past, if you remember it, you can change it.
The practical daily results of these examples are:
- We should listen to more than one person, before giving a decision about a happening,
- We should listen to the same person carefully and more than one time if he/she is giving an important information affecting our decision,
- If it is possible we should obtain objective data,
- While giving a decision about an event we faced personally, we should analyze again, in order to be sure about what we have faced,
- If somebody is giving information about the same event, we should also listen to him/her carefully.
During our daily rush, we may not have so much time to execute all these practices. On the other hand, I believe that taking decisions after listening to people very carefully will add positive value to our daily decisions.
Bye,
