For this blog post, I decided to go with a meme about cognitive illusions, one of the topics we discussed in class. I chose this specific image because we did not talk much about this one in class, however, it was probably one of the first images I came across in psychology.

In this illusion, depending on how you look at the image, you can see either a young woman or an old lady that looks like a witch, almost. The old lady is a profile view, and the young lady is looking over her shoulder. Where the old lady’s mouth is, the young lady is wearing a choker or necklace. Where the old lady’s eye is, the young lady’s ear is.

Ironically, my sensation and perception class with Professor Mailloux also went over optical illusions and topics including figure/ground perception and rules of segregation (in perception) which are similar to topics we discussed about in cognitive. Segregation rules include: depth, surroundedness, parallelism, convexity (edges that curve outwards tend to create figures), meaningfulness, orientation, and simplicity. Another process involved in recognizing visual objects is perceptual organization. Steps for this involve represent visual edges, represent regions bound by edges, identify regions as “figure” or “ground” (aka segregation), group similar regions, and lastly fill in missing edges and regions. As an example specific to this image, the convexity of the old lady’s nose can imply that she could be the main figure of the image. However, someone seeing the convexity of the young lady’s jawline can infer that the young woman is the main figure of the image. Although these steps and rules are not specifically relevant to this type of image, and mostly applies to patterns of cognitive/optical illusions, I still found it very intriguing and decided to share.

Throughout the election season and President Trump’s term, there are many people to point out his flaws. One of them being the recurrence of cognitive dissonance. I have never been more fascinated as to how many times someone can have inconsistent beliefs on so many different topics. Therefore, I decided to combine that with my passion for memes. Many people are familiar with the evil Kermit meme, for those who are not, in the Muppets Most Wanted movie, there is a scene where Kermit the frog is seen interacting with his evil lookalike Constantine (who wears a black coat). From that someone created a meme out of it that went viral. The meme that the user created quoted “me: sees a fluffy dog… me to me: steal him.” This meme is quite popular in the world of memes and I thought it fit my topic of cognitive dissonance very well. When I was creating the meme, I was stuck between writing about the Megyn Kelly topic and a nuclear weapon topic. I decided to go with the Megyn Kelly one because it was a little less controversial. If you are interested in seeing the other one, let me know in the comments!

In this meme, specifically, I am referencing when President Trump had an interview with Megyn Kelly in 2011 where she asked him if he thought he was better than her. He replied saying that he did not have a chance, etc. Then, in 2016, Trump ranted about how she is a nasty woman and not very good at what she does.

Cognitive dissonance, according to Merriam-Webster is a psychological conflict resulting from incongruous beliefs and attitudes held simultaneously. Cognitive dissonance is interesting to me because, is ironically is very relatable at surface level. Especially as displayed in the original meme: sees dog, steal him kind of way. A very popular example of cognitive dissonance is when people smoke regardless of knowing that it is highly linked to lung cancer.

Cognitive dissonance was first studied by Leon Festinger. He came out of an observation study on a cult which believed that the earth was going to be destroyed by a flood, and what happened to the members when it didn’t happen. The cognitive dissonance theory suggests that people have an inner drive to hold their attitudes and beliefs in harmony and avoid dissonance; which can also be known as the principle of cognitive consistency. It also represents a tendency for individuals to seek consistency among their cognitions. When dissonance arises, there are three ways it can be reduced: Change one or more of the cognitions to make the relationship between the two elements, one constant; seek new information to outweigh dissonant beliefs; or reduce the importance of the cognitions.

I am not the most creative, artistic, or inventive person, so if you have any tips or pointers on improving meme-making skills let me know!

DISCLAIMER: this is in no way to offend anyone, it was used as an example to display cognitive dissonance, using current events.

References:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJfH9O0w1WY

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cognitive%20dissonance

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/evil-kermit

https://www.simplypsychology.org/cognitive-dissonance.html

A good friend of mine came up to me on Monday with a really bizarre story about her boyfriend. She said she had been meaning to ask me, as a psychology major, if I had any knowledge about the topic. I was very surprised and intrigued to know what this was all about. Shocked, herself, she proceeded with her story: “My boyfriend has this weird thing where he can see faces, but apparently can’t remember the features. I asked him the other day to look at me for a minute, pay attention to every detail possible, and then look away and describe what I look like. He was completely unable to do it. He says he has had this happen to him since he can remember, but he doesn’t know why. Do you know what it is?” I had no idea, but I was captivated, nonetheless, and started asking her all these questions in order to make an educated guess. I had never heard of any condition that sounded at least somewhat familiar to what she was mentioning. I said, it has to be some cognitive dysfunction, perhaps a short-term memory problem. Weirdly enough, that same week, Dr. Rettinger, my cognitive psychology professor, mentioned a cognitive disorder called prosopagnosia— “the inability to remember peoples faces” he said. I was perplexed. How can the world work in such a way? I thought this would make a great meme, and started brainstorming.

A meme is only a picture, so I decided on a gif that could speak a little bit more for itself. In this meme, there are twin brothers taking care of their daughter/niece. Although the little girl does not have prosopagnosia, she is highly confused at the likeness of the faces. She looks back and forth expressing a sense of dissonance and discomfort. I chose this gif because I believe it represented what a prosopagnosic might feel every day of their lives with every encounter they have with any human face. Their inability to recall faces should keep them asking the same question: “do I know you”?
Prosopagnosia is a cognitive disorder otherwise known as face blindness; one of the most extreme forms of behavioral dissociation in humans, so far. As defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary: a form of visual agnosia characterized by an inability to recognize faces. Fortunately for our generation, we have highly advanced technological devices to help us decipher the root to cognitive disorders like this one; in this case CT being of high popularity. Research shows that face blindness is due to a lesion of the central visual system. More specifically, the lesion either destroys a sector within the system or disconnects it from limbic structures. The visual system is very complex. With it including many different aspects such as: object recognition, enhancement, color, etc. The interesting thing about prosopagnosics is that while they are incapable of recognizing faces, their object detection and intellectual functioning is not affected. Weirdly enough, recent cognitive analysis has demonstrated that this impairment isn’t only affecting the ability to recognize faces but also to detect or be alarmed by ambiguous stimuli.
So what can prosopagnosics do? As the first answer to many psychological conditions: therapy. Unfortunately the therapy being used to treat this disorder has demonstrated to be unsuccessful. In contrast, what these people are currently doing, in order to avoid acting like the girl with the twins in the gif above, is play a game: feature-to-feature. This game consists of using secondary clues such as voice recognition, clothing, hair color, etc. to make an educated guess of who the person is.

My knowledge in cognitive psychology is slowly evolving, and the facts given to me by my friend are also not too detailed for me to have a consice answer for her. But if I had to make an educated guess, I would think her boyfriend is prosopagnosic. I am now intrigued to meet this guy.

Can you imagine what it means to be playing a game every minute of your life? Can you imagine how frustrating it can get, at least growing up, to have a blur on peoples faces yet still be able to see everything else? Would you rather be blind or prosopagnosic? While these aren’t easy questions to answer, and can be quite controversial, I believe that putting yourself in someone else shoes can make understanding a situation ten times better.