The concept of perceptual protection. Andreeva G.M

• Perceptual defense is the effect of the negative impact of a person's motivation on perception through an increase in the threshold of perception of a certain object by an individual, at which he does not notice stimuli that threaten his consciousness. In the course of perceptual defense, a person tries to build a barrier to the impact of unpleasant events, facts, and experiences.

  Perceptual defense is one of the principles of perception selectivity formulated by J. Bruner and L. Postman, which also includes the principle of alertness (vigilance), which means that stimuli that threaten the integrity of the personality are recognized faster than others.

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Jerome Bruner, since 1947, together with co-authors, performed a number of works on the study of "perceptual defenses" in humans (Bruner J. S., Postman, L., Tension and tension-release as organizing factors in perception. Journal of Personality, 1947, N 15, p 300-308).

The researchers proceeded from the hypothesis that a person who perceives external signals plays active role, and is not a passive registrar of sensations.

In the first experiments, the method of word associations was used.

“Initially, the phenomenon of perceptual defense was discovered and described J. Bruner etc. as a way by which a person protects himself from the perception of stimuli that threaten him and stimuli that traumatize his experiences. Such a "fencing" does not mean that it is natural for an individual to bypass the stimulus that threatens him. It's about something else.

Firstly, it was found that a person has a hierarchy of thresholds for distinguishing different stimuli, and secondly, it was proved that the phenomenon of perceptual defense is important for understanding the motivation of the perceptual process. Perceptual defense can therefore be interpreted in this case as an attempt to ignore some features of the perceived object and as an attempt to build a certain barrier to its impact on the subject of knowledge.

To do this, it is important to take into account three important characteristics of perceptual defense, described in general psychology:

1) emotionally disturbing or frightening stimuli have a higher order of recognition than neutral ones;

2) in this case, substitutive cognitions are “stretched”, as it were, which prevent the recognition of threatening signals;

3) protection is often built, even if the signal is unrecognized: the individual, as it were, "closes" from it.

From this Bruner And Postman formulated the principles of perception selectivity, among which two should be mentioned in our context: the principle of protection (stimuli that are contrary to the expectations of the subject or carrying potentially hostile information are less recognized and subject to greater distortion) and the principle of alertness (stimuli that threaten the integrity of the individual, which can lead to serious violations in mental functioning, are recognized faster than others).

In everyday life, the existence of such mechanisms is proved by the existence of the so-called "taboo words". A good example of this is found in L.N. Tolstoy in Anna Karenina, when, in a difficult situation for her, she prefers not to talk with Vronsky about what really worries her deeply and poses an undoubted danger to her - about a break with him (“We won’t, we won’t talk about it. .."). Here we see the introduction of a "taboo" on a certain topic, i.e. an attempt to "close" from a threatening stimulus.

Andreeva G. M., Psychology of social cognition, M., Aspect Press, 2000, p. 156.

The perceptual threshold is closely related to the level of brain activation. In an awake and attentive individual, it may be lowered to facilitate the receipt and decoding of signals. But it can be increased during falling asleep or in some other states of consciousness, when the flow of information is filtered and perception is weakened.

In addition, the brain - and we have observed this - even in a fully awake person is apparently able to change the threshold at any moment: it all depends on whether the information received is important to it or not. This is what happens when messages come in from the outside, the emotional charge of which is difficult to bear (McGinnies, 1949). It has been noted that the word is a taboo relating to sex, for example the word vagina 1 , momentarily presented in written form with the help of a tachistoscope, was more difficult to recognize than frequently used words like vague 2 or matin 3, although they have the same number of letters and their general structure is similar. To learn an ordinary short word, on average, a tenth of a second is enough, but for the word -tabu it is necessary to double, and sometimes even triple this time.

Some authors have questioned the existence of such a perceptual defense from words deemed inappropriate. They believe that some words are simply less common, and therefore more difficult to perceive, than others, more "running". This could also apply to words that are very common in spoken language, but rarely used in writing. But how, then, to explain the obvious emotional reaction recorded with the help of a polygraph in cases where the subjects find it difficult to read the word taboo. Indeed, droplets of sweat may appear on the subject's skin and the heart rate may increase even when the strength of the visual stimulus was significantly below the threshold of perception. According to some critics, this simply proves that a taboo word, even a recognized one, is always difficult to pronounce aloud in the presence of strangers, especially if one is not sure of the correct reading. But how then to explain the fact that in some subjects these and precisely these words are recognized much earlier than others (even when the stimulus is below the threshold of perception), which already clearly indicates the presence of some kind of mechanism perceptual vigilance.

1 Vagina (fr.).

2 Unclear (fr.).

3 Morning (fr.).

matin(eng) poet. matin

matin pl church (for) matins

Our perception of the world 199

Explanations of such phenomena are based on the idea already formulated by Freud that there is some kind of censorship at the level of consciousness that prevents certain socially unacceptable images or desires from crossing the threshold of perception. Our current, as yet incomplete, knowledge of the functioning of the brain allows us to put forward a number of hypotheses on this score.

One of them concerns the first level of memory - sensory memory. This is a mechanism by which signals are stored for a very short time (1/4 second) at the level of receptors (see Chapter 8), until it is decided whether to transfer them from here to short-term memory or not. This decision depends on a higher, cognitive level, where the censorship that Freud spoke about can operate.

Perhaps this censorship is carried out in the right hemisphere, which, reacting emotionally and more globally to the stimulus, penetrates into its meaning faster than the more rational left hemisphere, and does not allow the latter to continue decoding the word.

According to Dixon (1971), all signals that are not allowed into consciousness by censorship mechanisms are obviously processed by some more primitive system on preconscious level. They may constitute a reserve source of spontaneous images and free associations, and thus, in turn, play a role in the activation of the organism. This can manifest itself, for example, in dreams (dossier 4.1), in lightning flashes of intuition in creative workers, or, as we shall see later, in conditions of sensory isolation.

Personal qualities that are manifested in communication (communicative qualities) are described much more fully, especially in connection with studies of socio-psychological training (Petrovskaya, 1982). However, there are still quite large research reserves in this area. In particular, they consist in translating into the language of social psychology certain results of the study of personality obtained in general psychology, and in correlating with them certain special mechanisms of the perceptual process. The following are examples.

Perceptual defense mechanism. Being a kind of psychological defense, perceptual defense is one of the manifestations of the subject's interaction with the environment and is a way to protect a person from traumatic experiences, to protect from the perception of a threatening stimulus. In social psychology, during the period when J. Bruner developed the ideas of the "New Look", the concept of perceptual defense was included in the problematic of social perception, in particular, in the problematic of the perception of a person by a person. Although the experimental data obtained in general psychology regarding the subconscious attempts of the subject of perception to “circumvent” the stimulus that poses a threat have been criticized, the idea has been preserved in a modified form: as recognition of the role of motivation in the processes of social perception. In other words, in social psychology, perceptual defense can be considered as an attempt to ignore some features of another person during perception and thereby, as it were, build a barrier to his influence. Such a barrier can be built in relation to the entire group. In particular, another phenomenon described in social psychology, the so-called belief in a just world, can serve as a mechanism of perceptual defense. Opened by M. Lerner, this phenomenon consists in the fact that a person tends to believe in the existence of a correspondence between what he does and what rewards or punishments follow. This seems to be fair. Accordingly, it is difficult for a person to believe in injustice; that something unpleasant can happen to him without any "guilt" on his part. A meeting with injustice turns on the mechanism of perceptual defense: a person is fenced off from information that destroys faith in a "fair world". The perception of another person is, as it were, built into this belief: anyone who threatens it is either not perceived at all, or is perceived selectively (the subject of perception sees in him only features that confirm the stability and “correctness” of the surrounding world and closes himself from the perception of other features). The situation in the group can be either favorable or unfavorable for belief in a “just world”, and within each of these alternatives, expectations from the perception of group members will be formed differently. The peculiar form of perceptual defense that has arisen in this way also affects the nature of communication and interaction in the group.

Initially, the phenomenon of perceptual defense was discovered and described J. Bruner etc. as a way by which a person protects himself from the perception of stimuli that threaten him and stimuli that traumatize his experiences. Such a “fence” does not mean that it is common for an individual to bypass the stimulus that poses a threat to him / “This is about something else. Firstly, it was found that a person has a hierarchy of thresholds for distinguishing different stimuli, and secondly, it was proved that that the phenomenon of perceptual defense is important for understanding the motivation of the perceptual process.

three important characteristics of perceptual defense described in general psychology: 1) emotionally disturbing or frightening stimuli have a higher order of recognition than neutral ones; 2) in this case, substitutive cognitions are “stretched”, as it were, which prevent the recognition of threatening signals; 3) protection is often built, even if the signal is unrecognized: the individual seems to “close” from it. From this, Bruner and Postman formulated the principles of perceptual selectivity, among which two must be mentioned in our context: protection principle (incentives contrary to expectations subject or carrying potentially hostile information are less recognizable and subject to greater distortion) and vigilance principle (stimuli that threaten the integrity of the individual, which can lead to serious disturbances in mental functioning, are recognized faster than others).

Perceptual defense can be defined within the framework of the psychology of social cognition as change in the threshold of awareness of social I any significant material; It manifests itself in quite unexpected forms. An example of this is the marked G. All-port"the principle of the last attempt" - the desire of a person in difficult circumstances for him to "cling" to the last for some familiar truth, fencing it off from any threats coming from outside.

Another specific manifestation of the phenomenon of perceptual defense in the process of social cognition is open M. Lerner the phenomenon of "faith in a just world". Its essence lies in the fact that a person does not want to believe that something “bad” can happen to him personally without his fault, because the world is “fair”. It is naturally easier to live in the conviction that without guilt you will never be punished. And this feeling of psychological comfort makes us fence ourselves off from the information that threatens to destroy this comfort.

This logic of reasoning is supplemented by a phenomenon called the “hindsight effect”, when a person after familiarizing himself with the result of an event, he joyfully declares: “I knew it!” This helps to build confidence in one's own rightness.

On the basis of such a naive belief, there is a tendency to "attribute atrocities to the victims, and various positive (successful) actions to "positive" characters.

The significance of faith in a just world, as a kind of perceptual defense, plays a large> role in choosing a behavior strategy. All the more important is the destruction of this faith. An important consequence of this is the open M. Seligman phenomenon "learned helplessness" [cm. 98]. Initially, this phenomenon was identified in experiments with animals (horses at the races, constantly punished for both poor and relatively good results, lost all motivation to improve their achievements). Later it was found that "learned helplessness" can also be characteristic of people. It occurs when che-; The man realizes that he is unable to predict or control the outcome of his actions. The information received from the outside is not enough to achieve a result that depends on us. And if something is unpredictable, then, regardless of our efforts, something undesirable can happen. There is a situation described by L. Carroll in a fairy tale

"Alice in Wonderland": whatever Alice takes on, everything turns out to be "not as" as expected. A person who finds himself in such a situation learns "helplessness": he begins to behave like a victim - passively and without energy. Disbelief in one's own strength, tacit acceptance that nothing can be done is also a kind of loss of faith in a just world.

The onset of such a state is closely connected with a number of already considered cognitive processes. It turned out that "learned helplessness" in a certain way depends on the attributive style of the individual. Of the three attributive styles: pessimistic, optimistic, and unrealistically optimistic, the first most often leads to the fact that a person turns to an external locus of control (becomes external). This leads to a refusal, from the desire to change something, and in general to a lack of faith in the fundamental possibility of changing something. In this situation, a person getting used to to helplessness: a certain style of working with social information, the destruction of protection from negative information give rise to a special type of behavior.

The prevalence of faith in a just world and the painful experiences of the consequences of its destruction are phenomena of the same order. It is clear that the dream of the stability of the social world is by no means always supported by reality. And then two variants of the significance of these factors in social cognition may arise: either an even greater separation of the “picture” of the real world from its image constructed in the head, or, on the contrary, the desire to achieve the desired stability in the real world as well. But this is already a question about the connection between cognition and action, the determinant of the solution of which cannot be only a combination of purely psychological factors.