The contrast effect is not without limits or arbitrary, but can work within certain limits. If we want to understand the phenomenon of contrast effect described in the previous article in more detail, it is useful to address this issue.
Reality inertia
Human perception is ultimately linked to reality and, as we can see in the visual perceptual frustration illustration of the same grey circle against a dark or light background, the grey circle in the middle may be perceived as slightly darker or lighter, but it is still grey and the difference between the perception of the two grey circles is not very large. There are situations where we can manipulate the contrast effect to produce a much larger difference in feeling or value judgement than this, but it will always be related to reality in some way and the manipulation of the contrast effect will not arbitrarily shape our feelings about things, but will only modify them within certain limits.
One-way
It is always our previous experience or our established value system that is the reference point against which we measure and it is the new experience in time that is the reference point against which we measure and evaluate and not vice versa.
When we moved our hand from cold water to lukewarm water, we perceived the lukewarm water, the last current perception, as warm and not retroactively our perception of cold water was changed by our brain in the knowledge of the new experience.
Some comparability
The things to be compared must be sufficiently similar, identical in nature and within a certain size range, e.g. the same person at a different stage of development or a long-footed basketball player next to an average-sized reporter. If the contrast is unrealistically high and there are differences in size or the nature of the things being compared is too different, then contrast perception will not work well, our brain will not interpret it as contrast.
It is difficult to perceive contrast between a speck of dust and a galaxy. We still have the grain of dust, but we can’t easily interpret the size of the galaxy by itself, and certainly not in relation to each other. The TV reporter in question may look small when interviewing a basketball player, but the size contrast may not be so striking to our brains when the reporter is standing in front of a sports hall. In the latter case, there is not the kind of categorical identity that would encourage the brain to compare and contrast.
Distance
Our standard of living also affects our sense of happiness and satisfaction. We think that if we still had this or that – who wants what – in our lives, we would be much happier.
One might ask, why are we not much happier about our standard of living than a person living hundreds of years earlier in, say, the Roman Empire, or a person living in much poorer conditions in a tribe in Africa in our time? A person living at an average standard has a roof over their head, heating and cooling in their home, English toilets, showers, baths, hot water, a mobile phone to reach almost anyone at any time and the internet to access an endless supply of information, simply and we have not even mentioned better health, education, human rights. We also have food, we have clothes, if we need something we can go to a shop or a mall and simply buy it, or if it’s not there we can order it online and it will arrive within a few days. We could go on and on about all the things that have improved our standard of living that the richest people at the top of the societies of a few hundred years ago could not even dream of, because they had no way of imagining them, let alone using them.
Why is it that, despite such dramatic improvements in living standards, we do not have the impression that people are as happy now as they were in much poorer circumstances in earlier times, and in fact society is full of frustrated, unhappy people who do not see their lives as fortunate.
One reason for this may be that our minds are compared to what is available to them and that is the environment we live in, the society we live in, the people around us, compared to which our standard of living may not be so special at all, but rather normal, expected or even lower than we would like.
A person socialised in a western culture has some knowledge of the people of earlier times or of the people of Ethiopia, but very little, and certainly no personal experience of their way of life, but only theoretical knowledge far removed from us. Just because I know that many people in Africa – and in other parts of the world – are starving, it is unlikely to have an impact on my everyday experience of life, because it is far away from me, not necessarily physically or temporally, but mentally and spiritually, and therefore has no meaningful impact on my daily life. Whereas what I experience among my relatives, friends, colleagues and where I place myself in relation to them can be an everyday life experience and benchmark.
Continuity, drift – the invisible change
The opposite of relative contrast is the imperceptible drift, a series of small changes that our minds cannot register without sufficient contrast, but which happen to us.
If one does not see a child for a year, one is surprised at how much he or she has changed, whereas a parent who sees him or her every day and does not perceive mental contrast because of the constant small daily changes does not have such an experience, at most only very rarely, if he or she stops and recalls a little. Such a moment might be when someone’s children fly out and with that comes a sharp change in their daily life and they remember that not so long ago their son or daughter was running around as a small child. But with the arrival of relatives who visit once a year, there is always the obligatory round of running the contrast between the memory of last year and the children’s current level of development that the visitor is obviously confronted with and expresses his or her dismay at.
The child grows in the same way, so what is the difference between the experience of a parent who is always present and a relative who visits once a year? Perception. The brain cannot register very small changes every day without sufficient contrast, so the parent experiences an imperceptible drift, whereas after a year of absence the changes are so large that they become a contrast that the brain can perceive.
In such cases, principles, rules, absolute standards can help to identify early on the deviation from the original direction and level. Such a reference point, to which we can constantly compare and visualise continuous development without contrast, is when we place an (absolute) cm scale on the wall of a child’s room to measure height. If not on a daily basis, but by adding to it every month, we can make visible the small changes and contrasts that we would otherwise not consciously notice ourselves.
So to experience relative contrast, we need a critical strength or magnitude of actual contrast that exceeds a threshold of perception.
Replacement
Since the brain can only focus on one type of contrast at a time, the stronger one, and new impulses keep coming, the old ones are pushed into the background and forgotten, it follows that we live in a chain of contrast effects, one following, replacing, replacing the other contrast sensation of a similar nature.
A contrast sensation is therefore either replaced by another or, in the absence of another, has a fade, fades, is forgotten, i.e. either way, but they are typically relatively transient and short-lived.
A single focus
Pickpockets can also play a trick by creating a distraction, a perceptual contrast – e.g. a stronger push, speech – that at a given time takes attention away from the perception of a smaller event such as picking a pocket of a purse. We might normally contrast the still state with the small movement caused by the change in perception caused by the removal of the wallet, but the distraction creates a different kind of stronger contrast to which our minds involuntarily jump and become preoccupied.
This shows that in contrast, not only are two similar states in a distinguishable relation to each other, but contrast differences can arise between different simultaneous contrast states, and thus one becomes more important, more perceptible, and the other not. The brain can only really pay attention to one contrast at a time and the stronger contrast takes the attention and the others are temporarily devalued and relegated to the background.
2-3 vs. many options
Contrasting two things is easy. If there is a third, we can use it as a reference point and reinforcement. But above that it starts to get complicated and the more choices there are and the less clear it is which is the better choice, because one is better at this and one is better at that, one is slightly better and one is much better, the more cognitive overload is created and the mind cannot effectively intuitively deal with it, it cannot simply declare a winner.
Thus, with many choices, the intuitive decision becomes a conscious, intellectually complex decision, at the end of which, even if we do decide, we experience a sense of frustration at the options and missed advantages we have foregone. Ideally, between the 2-3 options, there is a low value option, a mid value reference point and a better choice that clearly stands out from the other two with sufficient contrast.