Reading Jonah Lehrer's book "How We Decide" – not unlike Malcolm Gladwell's bestseller: "Blink" – I'm reminded how much our perceptions of the world are relative.
In one telling experiment, subjects were asked to rate their favorite strawberry jams from among a dozen or so. Once that had been accomplished, the researchers asked them to then describe what it was that they liked and why one jam was selected over another. Finally, they were asked once again to rate the jams. Surprisingly, the results from the first and second trials were very different.
The researchers, and Lehrer, account for this by noting that we use two different parts of the brain for each of these two tasks: in the first one our brains are judging the taste…etc. in a non-analytic way — gut instinct, one might say. Actually, the brain is subconsciously processing lots of information in this mode, just not in a way that we are aware of.
In the second trial, when the subjects are asked to defend their choices, the "rational" part of our mental processing steps in and attempts to legitimize the ratings. However, this causes the jam to be experienced differently, in a more intellectual way, and so the gut instincts (perhaps we can call them our pre-cognitive impressions) are second-guessed.
I'm wondering how often this happens when we are contemplating a work of art. In some cases, it may actually enhance our perception, as when we are informed that the Van Gogh painting before us is the last one he painted before committing suicide.
More often, I'm guessing, our rational mind second-guesses our gut-feeling and the magic is lost.
