Sharpen Your Perception, Change Your Life

If you look very closely at a remarkably detailed centuries-old portrait of a professor’s wife in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, you might notice something that most people miss. Although Mrs. John Winthrop is wearing a garnet-and-diamond wedding ring in the painting by John Singleton Copley, the ring is missing in the reflection of her hand in a mahogany table. Some art historians have interpreted this as a sly comment on the state of Mrs. Winthrop’s marriage.

Our tendency to miss that detail, and many other large and small details not only in art but also in real life, reflects a crucial but often overlooked fact—we’re failing to fully notice the world around us. That failure costs us opportunities, creates dangers and makes life less interesting.

You can do better—you can see more.

Amy E. Herman teaches “The Art of Perception,” a course to help FBI agents, police, Fortune 500 CEOs, emergency room doctors and many others become more effective in their jobs and their lives by improving their ability to observe. That includes taking them to museums to stare at paintings but also much more. Bottom Line ­Personal asked her how we all can develop this skill and how it can help us improve our lives…

Our Brains Filter Out Most of What We See

Our brains actually process only a small amount of what our eyes see. It has to be this way—if the brain analyzed every last visual detail, we would be overwhelmed every time we walked down a city street. But sometimes our minds miss things that turn out to be important, and this problem is only growing worse. Distraction dramatically reduces the brain’s ability to process visual information. Thanks to devices such as smartphones, many of us are more distracted than ever.

Viewing art offers an excellent opportunity to improve observational skills. Researchers have found that the brain is best able to break bad habits when confronted by unfamiliar venues—unfamiliarity takes us out of our comfort zones, which makes it easier to modify our usual patterns. And unless you’re an art historian, a museum or a gallery typically is an unfamiliar venue.

4 Ways to Observe Better

It is difficult to break out of our natural tendencies in observing things, but there are tricks to help us do so…

Change your perspective—literally. Michelangelo’s masterpiece David is among the most famous sculptures in the world. Most people who have viewed it see David as relaxed and confident. But that’s because they almost always see him from a distance and from below—it’s a tall statue on a large base.

If you were to look at the statue’s face more closely and straight on, ­David would appear to be tense and fearful.

A similar lack of perspective limits us in matters large and small in everyday life.

Example: Can’t find the mayonnaise in the fridge even though you know it’s right there? Your eyes likely are seeing the mayonnaise jar, but your brain is filtering it out, perhaps because it seems too familiar to be worthy of attention and it blends in with other familiar objects. This may seem like a trivial example, but it illustrates how we can be stymied by the tendency to view things from a single, familiar perspective.

What to do: To spot the mayo, move half a step to one side…kneel down…or stand on a step stool. If you look at the interior of the fridge from atypical angles, its contents suddenly seem far less familiar and your brain will do less filtering.

If you need to take a fresh look at something that you have seen many times before, simply view it from a different angle or height. Sit down to look at something that you normally see while standing, or vice versa. Shifting perspective can help with more than just mundane matters such as the invisible mayo.

For instance, if you can’t grasp the meaning of an e-mail, try printing it out and reading it on paper. If you want to know what you look like to others, try taking photos of yourself from various angles rather than just looking at ­yourself straight on in a mirror.

Don’t get frozen into what you first see—or expect to see…or want to see. A 1978 photo by Joel Sternfeld shows a mostly bucolic scene of a farm market selling pumpkins, with big signs on the roof—“McLean Farm Market…Sweet Cider.” When asked to describe the ­photo, many people fail to mention that in the background there is a house engulfed in flames. Sometimes, part of an image becomes so dominant that something discordant with that ­image is overlooked.

Example: Online dating scams prey on the tendency for our observations to become “locked in.” A victim meets someone on a dating website…is attracted to and charmed by that person…and gets involved in a long-distance relationship. This victim is then asked to help pay travel expenses so that the far-off romantic partner can visit—only it’s a scam and the “partner” pockets the travel money. Intelligent people occasionally fall for this seemingly obvious scam because the scammer creates an image of a loving partner before requesting cash. Once we see someone a certain way, it becomes very difficult to see that person in a completely different way.

What to do: Don’t ignore details even if they conflict with your overall impression.

Don’t let a “second set of eyes” dominate your perception. If you listen to someone else’s opinion about the meaning of a piece of art before seeing it yourself, the odds are high that you will see the art in the same way. And this often is true in other situations as well.

Example: Medical researchers have found that when a doctor reviews a patient’s medical history before examining that patient, the doctor becomes much more likely to accept the diagnosis that previous doctors made.

What to do: When possible, form your own opinion before exploring what others think…and let other people form their own opinions before saying what you think.

Don’t fixate just on what your brain perceives to be most important. Why does almost no one notice the missing wedding ring in Mrs. Winthrop’s reflection in the Copley painting? One reason is, of course, that this ring is a small detail in a large portrait…but that’s not the only reason. The entire reflection of Mrs. Winthrop is not small—it fills much of the lower part of the canvas—yet if you ask people who have viewed the painting to describe it a short time later, many do not remember the reflection at all. Their brains decided that the main image of Mrs. Winthrop was the only crucial component. This tendency to completely overlook things that do not seem ­pivotal is pervasive—even professional investigators fall victim to it.

Example: New York City police officers studied security footage of a suspect in a 2007 murder dozens of times, searching for visual evidence that the murder weapon was concealed in the bag that the suspect carried. Only late in the investigation did someone notice that this suspect had turned her pants inside out between arriving at the murder scene and departing, presumably to hide blood stains. The investigators were so focused on the suspect’s bag that this crucial and seemingly obvious clue nearly escaped their notice.

What to do: When you are studying something intently or thinking about a topic in depth, take a brief break every 20 minutes and a longer break every 90 minutes. These longer breaks should be lengthy enough that all thoughts about the area of study are set aside. Time away from a task helps break the brain’s natural tendency toward tunnel vision, allowing us to return with a fresh perspective. For example, if you have been staring at your tax return for some time and you just can’t make the figures add up the way they should, take a break and come back to it later.