Is a “red” rose really red?
According to Lisa Feldman Barrett, PhD, a University Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University, it’s not that simple.
While the flower may appear obviously red, the color isn’t an inherent property of the flower itself. Instead, it’s relational, meaning it emerges from the relationship between light, receptors in the eye, and signals processed in the brain.
So, if something as basic as color depends on the relationship between the world and the person perceiving it, what about the rest of reality?
This thought exercise reveals how each of us contributes to our reality, Barrett says, and how we have more control — more responsibility — than we might think.
Seeing the same world differently
Barrett uses animals to break down the concept. Humans typically have three types of color receptors, or cones, in the retina, while dogs have only two. Because of this, we may see a rose as red while a dog sees it as muddy brown. We might assume the dog simply can’t see the rose’s “true” red color. We similarly describe humans who may be missing a type of cone and see color differently as “colorblind.”
But what if humans typically had four types of cones instead of three? Would the rose objectively be another color, making those of us with three types of cones colorblind?
Barrett says even the most basic aspects of what we take to be objective reality are rooted in the relationship between what is out in the world and what is inside us. Together, they create patterns we experience as reality.
Even emotional expression is relational
The same idea also applies to emotions, such as anger, that we often believe to be objective.
Barrett says the so-called universal expressions of emotion are really stereotypes. For example, if you know nothing about a person, you may interpret a scowl as a sign of anger. But that meaning isn’t inherent in the signal itself.
People in Western culture scowl only about 35 percent of the time when they’re angry, according to Barrett. So, if you assume a scowl is the universal expression of anger, you would miss 65 percent of the cases in which someone is angry.
“Part of what you did when you were a young child is that you learned patterns for anger, sadness, happiness, and fear,” she says. “If you cried or you observed somebody else crying and that experience was labeled as anger, then you would learn that as an instance of anger. And then that experience would become part of your remembered past — part of your Perception Box” — the invisible mental frame through which each of us experiences the world.
Understanding that every experience is shaped by a combination of the remembered past and the sensory present gives you more control over your actions and experiences than you may have thought, Barrett points out.
However, that control doesn’t necessarily look the way you’d expect.
Expanding the realities you can access
For example, if you’re hungry and can choose between potato chips and an apple, the conventional idea of self-control is that you inhibit your desire for the potato chips and choose the apple instead. But the idea of relational realism suggests there are other forms of control available to us.
Say you begin eating many types of apples, learning about them, and maybe become an apple expert. As a result, your remembered past changes, and you may become more likely to choose the apple over the potato chips.
“Ultimately, this means you have more control over the aspects or features of reality that are available to you in a given moment and which ones are not,” Barrett says. “That control also implies more responsibility when we consider other humans.”
Our influence also extends beyond our own reality. The way we behave toward others can, in some ways, influence their actions, Barrett says.
“That is the notion of karma,” she says. “And karma is a really good simplification for the idea that you are partly in control and therefore partly responsible for the world that you have to cope with.”
We interviewed Lisa Feldman Barrett for Relational Realism, a Big Think interview series created in partnership with Unlikely Collaborators. As a creative non-profit organization, they’re on a mission to help people challenge their perceptions and expand their thinking. Often that growth can start with just a single unlikely question that makes you rethink your convictions and adjust your vantage point. Watch the second episode above, and visit Perception Box to see more in this series.
This video You have more control over reality than you think is featured on Big Think.