an essay...

Hi everyone, I'm really sorry I know i haven't posted in a really long time. It is a little difficult not getting internet in your room, and also a lack of sleep. Makes you forget what's important. This isn't a real blog post, it's an essay I wrote for Psychology. A class I love just can't seem to get passing grades on tests, written assignments though are great! This was for our real world assignment. He gives us a month to do them and come up with an idea, however, I remembered the day before it was due. Luckily I had the perfect idea and wrote that night in thirty minutes.

It was 8:30 in the morning, Monday, September 29. By that time Congress had only been in session for half an hour and they were already voting. Since it was the first vote of the morning fifteen minutes were placed on the clock. The vote was on S. 906, a bill proposed by Senator Obama titled Mercury Market Minimization Act of 2007: To prohibit the Sale, Distribution, Transfer, and Export of Elemental Mercury, and for Other Purposes.

Normally when votes are the first of the series it takes members a few minutes for even the first ones to show up. After approximately five minutes, some forty members had voted “yay”. The clock kept ticking and suddenly a “nay” vote appeared on the tally screen. Immediately I assumed the vote belonged to a Congressman from Texas, Dr. Ron Paul. My eyes moved to the electronic board of names above the Well. The four panel board shows the vote of each member by a color light next to their names alphabetically. As far as I was aware there were two possibilities for the lights. Either the light closest to the name would shine red to represent a “nay”, or in the next column over a green light would appear to signify a “yay”.

My eyes immediately fell on the panel of “Paul TX” which had a red light immediately to its left. I scanned the remaining three panels in search of the members who were there early to vote. My eyes stopped on a “red” light next to the name of Gingley. Being a conservative, who often spoke about his views, I figured that he too was against this legislation. I checked back at the tally screen to check the state of the vote. Shocked, I found fifty something “yay” and only one “nay”. Before jumping to the conclusion that there was a problem with the electronic voting system I rescanned the four panels. Once again I found a “red” light next to Gingley and Paul TX. Checking one last time before questioning the system I read the tally screen, under “nay” it read one.

I turned to Mrs. Keating and said, “Excuse me Mrs. Keating, however it seems that the voting system isn’t working.” With a slight tone of worry in her voice she asks why and regarded both the panels and the tally screen. I explained to her why I thought it in error. That while there was only one “nay” vote according to the system both Congressman Gingley and Congressman Paul voted in negation of S. 906. After just a few seconds she said, “It’s orange, the light next to Gingley is orange. Orange means present, you had me worried for a second. But it’s good that you were paying attention.” And sure enough, now that I had been advised there was an orange light. I looked up next to Paul and saw red, when I looked next to Gingley the light shined orange.

The color of the two, while not identical weren’t too far apart. Since I wasn’t aware there was a possibility of an orange light, my eyes didn’t expect to see one. Therefore when at first I saw it, the light was red. Thinking back to my first reaction, it was a little more yellow, however it couldn’t possibly be a different color, orange, and without a second thought I deemed it red.

The fact that I didn’t even question its true color was because of top-down processing and perception. Due to top-down processing my perceptions came from past experiences and observations. I can’t remember ever seeing members vote “present” on bills let alone see an orange light on the vote panels. The fact that I was at first pausing on the color then moved to the assumption it was red is because I have never seen nor been told there were orange lights. I figured there was red and green. Anything close to either of the two needed fixing and would still be classified into one of the two colors.

Perception is how our brain processes information from the environment. The process involves the organization and interpretation of such information which is taken and made into a form which our brain can understand. Since my information did not have an orange light as a possibility I perceived it as something different than it really was. This is how our brain plays tricks on us. It can only decipher information on some basis, either in relation to some surrounding or some prior knowledge. In this instance my brain resulted to top-down processing and with the normal process of perception I perceived the wrong thing, which created confusion.