Activities

EXPECTATIONS

Goals

To enable participants to analyze how their own perceptions are formed.
To help participants understand the complexity of Israel as a country.
Time Required: 45 minutes
Materials: Photocopies of all Exercises, enlarging and removing titles for those reproduced from external links.

Procedure

Stage 1

Variation 1

Distribute Exercise #1 (Dalmatian picture & title) to half of your group (Group A)
http://www.optillusions.com/18.html

Give Exercise #2 (dalmatina picture without title) to the other half of the group (Group B)
Ask the participants what they see: Group A will see a dog playing in snow, while the majority of Group B will not.

Discussion

Why was it easier for one group and not the other to see the dog?

One picture was titled - one was not. Clearly, when we are told what to see, it is easier to see it. Group (a) saw the dog in the snow, because they were told what to see.

• How is your opinion of Israel created?
• What is the influence of television on what you see?
• What did you expect to see before you began this serious discussion / came to Israel - and what was the reality you found?

Variation 2:

Use these two images, one for each group and ask that each person write down what they see first:

W.E. Hill, "My wife and my mother-in-law", 1915
http://www.grand-illusions.com/woman.htm

Edgar Rubin Face-Vase illusion, 1915, as reproduced here
http://dragon.uml.edu/psych/rubin.html or http://goto.bilkent.edu.tr/gunes/illusion22.htm
- and see what happens when you use this differentiated version http://aris.ss.uci.edu/cogsci/personnel/hoffman/faces-vases.gif

Stage 2

Distribute photocopies of Exercise 4

Discussion

What is written on this page? (participants will answer A, B.)
What are the central figures? (participants will answer B.)
Are you certain?
The 'B' only appears a 'B' because it is surrounded by 'A' and 'C'.

Stage 3

Distribute photocopies of Exercise 5

Discussion

In this Exercise, the B has become the number 13.
Why? How do the '12' and '14' surrounding the central figure influence our perception?

The Dalmatian exercise was also based on the selective way we see tasks, and the impact of the cognitive (expectations) on visual perception.
The alternative figures relate to figure-ground perception.
These last examples are associated with a phenomenon known as "Gestalt Completion". [See http://www.ukl.uni-freiburg.de/aug/bach/illus/letters-ink.html]

Likewise, the way we see events in Israel is often influenced by our own "surroundings". If this is your first visit to Israel/critical media review, what were your prior and subsequent perceptions of Israel? or Israelis?
By the end of the tour/session, we should reconsider whether they were correct.

a. Expectations Exercise 4

b. Expectations Exercise 5

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