Perceptual Blindness: Why you got used

Late last week I receive this call from a close friend of mine. Says that another good friend of hers has a job that really needs to be done ‘urgently’ and she thinks I could do it. So being the enthusiastic me, loyal, and slow to disappoint, I assured that I was at her disposal.

I quickly rescheduled my Saturday. The job was transcribing some 45 minute voice clip. A first one for me, and following my non-disappointing nature I assured that I was up to task. Surely, what could be hard about listening to someone speak and writing down what they say? Right?

I mean, we've been doing it since nursery school! I confidently, gave a one hour timeline (I realized I sometimes write faster than a lecturer can dictate, so this was just childplay!). Something I was to regret saying two hours later when I was still stuck on the 15^th minute!

What I hadn’t anticipated was the whole recording was in some lingo similar to Swahili, I mean the dude was so bad at it that it took a whole five minutes to fathom one minute of his speech. And with a speech rate of three words per minutes I was looking at literally eight thousand words to translate. Most dumbfounding was that I was to keep the original word sequence, but now in English. Almost unintelligible!

When I was done six hours later I seriously hated the dude interviewee on tape. I think I still do.

Am not whining about the verbatim translation as such, since it’s usually done (for whatever reason), but the fact that I didn’t get my dues for the painstaking work I so devotedly did, despite the pay being extremely unreasonable.

Clearly, I admit, I was used.

In my blind, actually naïve trust, I failed to ask the questions that mattered. Even when I was halfway cursing and lamenting my poor decision, I still urged myself on to finish.

You might be wondering how I could have been so gullible. How I could not have seen it coming. Some friend actually told me he could have e-mailed half the job and half after the pay. Very simple, he said. But is it really?

Is it that easy to know when you are being used? I bet you’ll say yes, but take a moment and look at that day you did a favour for a friend, a colleague, your boss, your parent or even a stranger and then in a split second you realized that it wasn’t that much of a favour.  Have you had that moment where at the back of your mind a thought beckons, “this is not fair”?

A friend of mine had been in relationship for two years with this dude that she truly loved. At the prime of her youth, and running her own salon, she was sure to commit. She literally gave it all, her time, money and all

those other things that accrue to love relationships. The dude, a typical ‘hustler’ enjoyed it all, talked of the future, assured her she was the one and only, and all was bliss. Until he got a job at a multinational, that’s when her ‘flaws’ became conspicuous. The relationship trailed off to a sour end, from constant squabbles to utter contempt. Turns out that all along to the dude, she was a lucky catch for the moment.

Or even take the extent of this dude who in high school had fallen for this girl from a neighbouring school. During all the events that frequently happened they hang out together, girl gave sufficient attention to the dude enough to make him believe the feeling was reciprocal.

The subtlety of their relationship didn’t allow the dude to achieve full cognizance of his friend-zone misadventure, or so it seemed. Turns out the chic had serious esteem issues and the dude offered convenient escape.

Well, it is agreeable that there’s a lot of such exploit that goes on in relationships. Men use ladies feigning all manner of justifications and ladies too do so in equal measure.

Actually ladies exploit men much more than men are willing to admit. You will find that in most relationships it’s a tacit battle of who uses the other most. Sometimes one is shocked to realize that he was the one being used rather than the other way round. In fact the measure of how successful a relationship is can be put on the extent of disequilibrium between the two.

Parents too have not been spared, the sacrifices that they have to do to meet there children’s selfish expectations cannot be overstated. Interestingly too, some parents have learnt how to get back at their kids when they start fending for themselves.

Exploitation is almost some kind of a rite. At some point in your life you have been in a situation where you feel that whatever is happening to you is unfair. Maybe you realized it later or in the process, but most probably you let it pass. Maybe out of respect, probably fear or most admirably you bitterly borrowed the ‘once bitten twice shy’ adage.

The most disturbing thing about all this is that, most of the time the signs are all over around you. It doesn’t happen like that carefully orchestrated plan that you only realize after it has happened as some may want to believe. The fact is that the human brain is a superior processor that receives thousands of stimuli relating to all manner of issues. It is capable of generating doubt, suspicion, trust, hope, fear, love, compromise, hate, anger and several other emotions that steer our decision making process.

From this you’d presume that I am purporting that we are supposed to be these perfect beings who only make the right choice no matter what the situation. Well, we all know that doesn’t happen. But, is it possible?

Well, Yes and No.

Just like any other exemplary thing, the human brain has a flaw. It is not self-sufficient, in that with the mechanics being standard in all humans, it is the ability of each person to train the brain to process stimuli to their advantage that differentiates good and well-calculated decisions to poor and mediocre ones.

The Bible calls it looking without seeing. Arien Mack and Irvin Rock called it ‘perceptual blindness’; inability to perceive something that is within one’s direct perceptual field because one is attending to something else. The event within which an individual fails to recognize unexpected stimulus that is in plain sight.

Whilst this in its literal sense it relates to actual sight, it actually applies to our cognitive competencies. Save for the case of slavery where people are presented with no choice, all other situations of exploitation have to do with cognition.

Assuming that every human is out to look after their best interest then it is paradoxical that with availability of relevant facts people end up making self-destructive decisions, or in the least, put themselves in the line for exploitation.

It is suggested that, inattentional blindness can occur in any individual, where it simply becomes impossible for one to attend to all the stimuli in a given situation and as such one becomes blind to certain stimuli. The choice of which stimuli to give attention to is what distinguishes a good decision from a bad, or a plain lame one.

Interestingly, when you get used, most probably you’ve been blind to the most salient of the stimuli!

Think you’ve been used?