personal values as selective factors in perception* · ject. the test was given either some weeks...

PERSONAL VALUES AS SELECTIVE FACTORSIN PERCEPTION*

BY LEO POSTMAN

Indiana University

JEROME S. BRUNER

Harvard University

AND

ELLIOTT McGINNIES

University of Alabama

W HAT one sees, what one ob-serves, is inevitably what oneselects from a near infinitude

of potential percepts. Perceptual selec-tion depends not only upon the "pri-mary determinants of attention" but isalso a servant of one's interests, needs,and values.

Can one lean on the slender reed of"the limited span of attention" and itsprimary determinants to explain theselectivity of perception? That thereis.a limited span can hardly be denied.But to invoke it in explanation of itselfleaves unexplained the differences inthe perceptions of individuals facedwith the same stimuli and all hamperedby a "limited span of attention" andgoverned by common primary deter-minants.

The properties of the stimulus field asthey affect the range and fluctuation ofattention have been a'mply investigated:"intensity, quality, repetition, sudden-ness, movement, novelty, congruitywith the present contents of conscious-ness are one and all [primary] deter-minants of attention" (13, p. 270). Yet,however far one pushes such research,half of the question remains unan-swered: what does the individual con-

* The research reported here was done undera grant from the Laboratory of Social Relationsof Harvard University. The writers are indebtedto the Research Committee of the Laboratory forits generous support.

tribute to perceptual selection over andabove a healthy pair of eyes and theappropriate response mechanisms? Theconcepts of secondary and derived pri-mary attention are merely restatementsof the problem, affirming that the or-ganism can and does attend to things inspite of the absence of primary deter-minants (13). To say that there are"individual differences" in perceptualbehavior is merely another way to re-state the problem and to dismiss one ofthe most fruitful sources of psychologi-cal research.

Psychologists have in recent yearsbeen increasingly concerned with whatmay be called organismic or adjustivedeterminants in perception. ProfessorE. G. Boring has, for example, pointedout that "the purpose of perception iseconomy of thinking. It picks out andestablishes what is permanent and there-fore important to the organism for itssurvival and welfare" (2). In general,however, "survival and welfare" havebeen treated as synonymous with the"primary biological needs" of the or-ganism. The supposed utility of per-ceptual constancies described in termsof "regression to the real object" illus-trates well this generalized organismicapproach to the problem.

But survival and welfare obviouslyencompass more than purely biologicalneeds. There remains the evanescent

142

PERSONAL VALUES AS, SELECTIVE FACTORS IN,PERCEPTION 143

residual category of "personality," atonce too broad to be operationally use-ful to the student of perception and tooubiquitous to be neglected. What isrequired are dimensions of variation inpersonality which are both measurableand intrinsically important, and whichcan be related to individual differencesin perception.

One such dimension of variation inpersonality is personal interest or value.It is with this dimension of personality

Twenty-five subjects, students at Har-vard and Radcliffe, were shown 36words, one at a time, in a modifiedDodge tachistoscope. The words, typedin capital letters, were chosen to repre-sent the six values measured by theAllport-Vernon Study of Values—theo-retical, economic, aesthetic, social, politi-cal, and religious. These words wereunanimously chosen by three independ-ent judges familiar with the Sprangervalue classification from a preliminary

TABLE i

STIMULUS WORDS REPRESENTING THE Six SPRANGER VALUE CATEGORIES

THEORETICAL

theoryverifysciencelogicalresearchanalysis

ECONOMIC

incomeusefulwealthyfinanceeconomiccommerce

AESTHETIC

beautyartistpoetryelegantliterarygraceful

SOCIAL

lovingkindlydevotedhelpfulfriendlysociable

POLITICAL

governfamouscompetecitizenpoliticsdominate

RELIGIOUS

prayersacredworshipblessedreligionreverent

in its relation to perceptual selectivitythat the present study is concerned. Ourhypothesis, briefly, is that personal val-ues are demonstrable determinants ofwhat the individual selects perceptuallyfrom his environment.

THE EXPERIMENTPerceptual selectivity may be investi-

gated in different ways. A subject maybe faced with a complex field fromwhich he selects this or that item orconfiguration. This type of selectionmay be called spatial selection. Or, asubject may be presented with a seriesof items one at a time, each well withinhis span of attention, and the speedwith which the various items are cor-rectly recognized may be compared.This type of selection may be calledtemporal selection. These two forms ofselectivity are alike in that they bothreflect differential tuning of the indi-vidual to stimulus objects in the en-vironment. In the experiment here re-ported temporal selection was studied.

list of 96 words equally distributedamong the six values. The final list,comprising six words for each value,was balanced for length of words byusing • an equal number of six- andseven-letter words for each value. Inso-far as possible, an attempt was made tochoose words of equal familiarity. Thestimulus words are listed by valuecategory in Table i.1

The 36 words were shown to the sub-1 A word should be said in explanation of the

Spanger values. In some cases, titles of valuecategories do not fully correspond to commonusage. Theoretical refers to a dominant interestin the discovery of truth. Economic value isfocused on usefulness and practicality. Theaesthetic value emphasizes form and harmony.Love of people and sympathy characterize thosehigh in social value. Interest in power is thedefining property of political value which tran-scends interest in the narrow field of politics asordinarily understood. Finally, religious valuedenotes an urge for unity, a desire to identifywith some larger and more comprehensive totality.Here again the definition of religious value goesbeyond the narrower meaning of religious prac-tice. A full discussion of these values may befound in Spranger (12), and Vernon and Allport

144 LEO POSTMAN, JEROME S. BRUNER AND ELLIOTT MC&NNIES

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FIG. i. VALUE PROFILES AND TIME-OF-RECOGNITION PROFILES OF THE INDIVIDUAL SUBJECTSThe values tested by the Allport-Vernon Study are indicated along the abscissa. Value

PERSONAL VALUES AS SELECTIVE FACTORS IN PERCEPTION

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scores are plotted against the left-hand ordinate. Average recognition times for the wordsrepresenting these values are plotted against the right-hand ordinate. Solid lines representvalue scores, dotted lines represent times of recognition.

LEO POSTMAN, JEROME S. BRUNER AND ELLIOTT MCGINNIES

RESULTS OF THE EXPERIMENTject in random order. Each word wasexposed three times for .01 second.If the subject failed to recognize theword, three exposures were then givenat .02, .03 second, etc., at exposure timesincreasing in even steps of .01 second

.until recognition occurred. A full rec-ord was kept of all the subject's pre-recognition responses. Subjects were

Analysis of Recognition Thresholds*Is time of recognition significantly in-fluenced by the value which a givenstimulus word represents? Each sub-ject's value profile was compared withhis "time-of-recognition profile." Thevalue profile is a type of psychographon which the subject's scores in the six

TABLE 2

CHI-SQUARE TEST OF SIGNIFICANCE OF ASSOCIATION BETWEEN VALUE PREFERENCE ANDTIME OF RECOGNITION

(Theoretical Frequencies are in Italics.)

VALUE SCORESAbove Mean Below Mean

TIME OFRECOGNITION

AboveMean

BelowMean

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283

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216

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372

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instructed simply to report everythingthat they saw or thought they saw-

To obtain an independent measureof personal value orientation, the All-port-Vernon Study of Values (i) wasadministered individually to each sub-ject. The test was given either someweeks in advance of the perceptual ex-periment or after the experiment.

In summary, then, the following rec-ords were obtained for each subject:

1. Time of recognition for 36 wordsrepresenting the six Sprangervalues.

2. Attempted solutions preceding rec-ognition of the actual words.

3. Score profiles on the Allport-Ver-non test, which could be evaluatedagainst population norms.

Spranger values as measured by theAllport-Vernon Study are plotted. Theaverage times of recognition for thesets of six words representing each ofthe value areas constitute the time-of-recognition profile. The two profilesfor each of the 25 subjects are presentedin Figure i. Along the baseline thevalue-areas are indicated. Allport-Ver-non scores are plotted against the left-hand ordinate and average times ofrecognition against the right-hand ordi-nate.2 Inspection of these profiles atonce reveals considerable variability but

2 Since according to our hypothesis a high-valueword should be recognized more quickly than alow-value one, time values on the ordinate ofthe time-of-recognition profile are plotted in de-scending rather than in ascending order. Thisarrangement makes value profiles and time-of-recognition profiles directly comparable.


also a marked tendency for high-valuewords to be recognized at shorter timeexposures, than low-value ones. In afew cases there is virtually one-to-one

words. Certainly visual inspection indi-cates that, for, the sample as a whole,time of recognition varies as a functionof value.

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Value RankFIG. 2. AVERAGE TIMES OF RECOGNITION FOR,THE WORDS REPRESENTING THE Six VALUES

OF THE ALLPORT-VERNON STUDY ARRANGED IN RANK ORDER

correspondence between the two profiles(e.g., the profiles of RB and IV). Suchstriking relationships are not, of course,the rule. One isolated case (JC) showswhat appears to be a reversal, high-value words requiring, on the whole, alonger exposure time than less-valued

Statistical analysis confirms this im-pression. The value scores of each sub-ject were classified as falling above orbelow the population mean (30) forthe Allport-Vernon test. His time-of-recognition scores were similarly di-vided into those falling below or above

148 LEO POSTMAN, JEROME S. BRUNER AND ELLIOTT McGiNNiEs

his own mean time of recognition.Combining the results for all subjectsinto a two-by-two contingency table(Table 2), a chi-square test of independ-ence was performed. The obtainedchi-square value of 11.87 indicates, ata high level of confidence, that the as-sociation between value orientation andtime of recognition is not random.8

An analysis in terms of a two-by-twotable, though useful, can do little morethan indicate that a general relation-ship does exist. For purposes of more

TABLE 3MEAN TIMES OF RECOGNITION AS A FUNCTION

OF INDIVIDUAL VALUE RANKS REPRE-SENTED BY THE STIMULUS WORDS

VALUE RANK

I2

3456

MEAN TIME opRECOGNITION IN SECONDS

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detailed analysis, each subject's valuescores were, therefore, ranked fromhighest (Rank i) to lowest (Rank 6).For the group as a whole, the averagetime of recognition was computed foreach of the six ranks. Note that theanalysis here is in terms of ran\ of valuerather than in terms of specific valueareas. That is to say, Rank i could beany one of the six values for a givensubject, and so on down for the re-maining ranks. The mean times of rec-ognition for the six value ranks are pre-sented numerically in Table 3 and

8 Our findings are congruent with the re-sults of earlier research carried out by A. G.Woolbert as reported by Cantril and Allport (6).Woolbert found that subjects perceived preferen-tially those items in a dummy newspaper whichwere most closely related to their dominantvalues as measured by the Allport-Vernon Studyof Values.

graphically in Figure 2. The signifi-cance of the difference between themean times of recognition of stimuluswords was tested for all possible com-binations of value ranks. As Table 4shows, the words symbolizing the sub-jects' highest ranking value are recog-nized at exposure times significantlyshorter than those required for wordssymbolizing their lowest ranking value.A comparison of the highest rankingand second lowest value (Ranks i and5) yields a similar result. All other dif-ferences fail to reach statistical signifi-cance although they are predominantlyin the expected direction.

The great majority of subjects, then,conform to a general pattern. Thehigher the value represented by a word,the more rapidly is it lively to be rec-ognized.

Analysis of Attempted Solutions.Statistical analysis shows that value actsas a sensitizer, lowers the perceptualthreshold. But value orientation doesmore than that. It is an active, selectivedisposition which in many subtle waysaffects the hypotheses and attempts atsolution which precede the actual rec-ognition of a stimulus word. Much canbe learped about the role of value asan organizing factor in perception froman analysis of pre-solution behavior.

Each subject's perceptual behaviorforms an individualized pattern and ourpreceding analysis of group data inevi-tably sacrifices a great deal of highlysuggestive information about individual"styles" of perceiving. As a first ap-proximation to a more intensive inves-tigation of perceptual behavior, we haveexamined carefully and sought to clas-sify individual pre-solution responses.Our effort has been to find categoriesof classification which might throw intorelief the directive influence of valueorientation on perception.

The following categories for the

PERSONAL VALUES AS SELECTIVE FACTORS IN PERCEPTION 149

analysis of pre-solution responses orhypotheses have emerged:

i. Covaluant responses: This categorycomprises responses which can beunambiguously classified as represent-

3. Structural responses: Under thisheading fall the very frequent incorrecthypotheses based on the structural char-acteristics of the stimulus word. Anillustrative sequence of hypotheses given

TABLE 4SIGNIFICANCE OF DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MEAN RECOGNITION TIMES FOR ALL

COMBINATIONS OF VALUE RANKS

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ing the same value area as the stimulusword. The subject who saw the wordEaster when the stimulus word wassacred illustrates the covaluant category.

2. Contravaluant responses: In somecases, the words reported in the pre-solution period were opposite in mean-ing to the stimulus word or served toderogate it. An instance is providedby a subject who saw scornful uponpresentation of the stimulus word help-ful. Or revenge instead of blessed.

by one subject in response to the wordloving was: movies, mowing, moving,lowing, and finally loving. A frequentstimulus-bound, structural hypothesiswas the response turkey for theory.

4, Nonsense responses: Two types ofresponses are included here: (a) non-sense words, such as linone for income,or weelby for wealthy; and (b) partialresponses in which the subject's hy-pothesis consisted of an enumeration ofparts of a word or individual letters.


5. Unrelated responses: This is ourresidual category. All responses whichcould not be related to the stimulusword in terms of any of the above cate-gories were provisionally classified asunrelated. Responses such as upper andcarol to a word like useful .may serveas an illustration. We do not for amoment believe that they are haphaz-ard responses. The fact that this cate-

urements, we nonetheless present theresults of our classification as the sim-plest and most convenient descriptionof general trends.

That several of our categories diddiscriminate between pre-solution re-sponses to high- and low-value wordsmay be taken as a presumptive demon-stration of their validity. Covaluanthypotheses occur with significantly

TABLE 5

MEAN FREQUENCY PER WORD OF DIFFERENT PRE-SOLUTION HYPOTHESES FOR HIGH-VALUEAND LOW-VALUE WORDS

TYPE OFHYPOTHESIS

CovaluantContravaluantStructuralNonsenseUnrelated

ALLWORDS

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HIGH-VALUEWORDS

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LOW-VALUEWORDS

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SIGNIFICANCE OFDIFFERENCES *

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.10 ( .92)

* Entries represent values of t, entries in parentheses are values of P.

gory turned out to be the most numer-ous is a commentary on the inadequacyof existing analytic categories in thestudy of pre-solution behavior in per-ception.

Table 5 represents the mean fre-quency with which each of these kindsof pre-solution hypotheses occurred perstimulus word in the subjects' high-value (Ranks i, 2, and 3) and low-value (Ranks 4, 5, and 6) areas. Table5 also shows the significance of thedifferences in the mean frequency ofthe various response categories whenhigh- and low-value areas are compared.

We are ready to grant at the outsetthat the categories of classification usedin the analysis of pre-solution hypothe-ses are tentative. Their reliability has,not as yet been demonstrated. The cate-gories, moreover, are not always mu-tually exclusive. Without claiming anyhigh degree of precision in our meas-

higher frequency in response to high-value words than they do in response tolow-value words. A complementaryfinding is that both contravaluant andnonsense hypotheses , appear moreprominently among responses to low-value words. There is a similar tend-ency for structural hypotheses to beassociated more frequently with high-value words, though the difference fallsshort of statistical significance. Ourresidual category, unrelated hypotheses,favors neither high- nor low-value stim-ulus words, nor is there any particularreason why it should.

THE ROLE OF VALUE ORIENTATION INPERCEPTUAL SELECTION

Selection is one of the three basicadaptive processes that operate in per-ception. Inextricably linked with selec-tion are accentuation and fixation. Onceselected, a percept may be accentuated,

PERSONAL VALUES AS SELECTIVE FACTORS IN PERCEPTION 151

i.e., certain of its features ^may be em- which value orientation becomes, a de-phasized (3, 4, 5). Fixation denotes the terminant of selection.persistence and preferential retention Our results lead us to propose three

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Low-Value Words

Covoluont Structural Nonsense Contravaluant-

Type of HypothesisFIG 3. MEAN FREQUENCY WITH WHICH VARIOUS TYPES OF PRE-RECOGNITION HYPOTHESES

WERE GIVEN IN RESPONSE TO HIGH-VALUE AND LOW-VALUE WORDS

of certain selected percepts. Any per-ceptual behavior exhibits the three proc-esses. The experiments reported herefocus upon one aspect of this tripartiteprocess which as a whole constitutesperception: the mechanisms through

complementary selective mechanisms.Value orientation acts as a sensitizer,lowering thresholds for acceptable stim-ulus objects. Let us call this mecha-nism selective sensitization. Value ori-entation may, on the other hand, raise


thresholds for unacceptable stimulus ob-jects. We shall refer to this mechanismas perceptual defense. Finally, the per-ceiver, whatever the nature of the stimu-lus, favors the pre-solution hypotheseswhich reflect his value orientation. Hewill, therefore, perceive more readilystimulus objects which lie within thesame value area as his preferred pre-solution hypotheses. This third mecha-nism we shall term value resonance.

Selective Sensitization, The primaryevidence supporting this concept isprovided, as we have indicated, by thesignificantly lower thresholds of recog-nition for high-value words. Selectivesensitization may well be a specificcase of a more general phenomenon.Lashley has proposed, for example, that"one of the mechanisms through which"instinctive" or "drive" behavior oper-ates is perceptual sensitization (9). Theorganism's threshold is lowered for ob-jects which may serve to reduce drive.We should like to emphasize here thatsuch a process of perceptual sensitiza-tion is not limited to the types of be-havior commonly regarded as instinc-tive. Value orientation too, the result ofa long process of socialization, may serveas a sensitizer in much the same way.

That value orientation significantlyaffects the threshold time for the rec-ognition of words leads to a reconsid-eration of the parameters which mustbe taken into account in the measure-ment of any threshold. It is not alwayssufficient to state the stimulus conditionsand instructions to the subject underwhich threshold measurements aremade. The words representing the sixvalue areas were all equated as far aspossible in terms of such physical prop-erties as length, size, degree of illumi-nation, and all responses were givenunder the same general instruction.Yet widely different thresholds are ob-tained when the subjects' "set" or

orientation toward the stimulus ma-terials is taken into account. Had wefailed to consider the subjects' predis-position to respond to some values morereadily than to others, we should prob-ably have ascribed these individual dif-ferences merely to "chance fluctuationsin the measurement of the span of at-tention"! If the concepts of thresholdand sensitivity are to be extended totypes of perceptual phenomena morecomplex than sheer sensory acuity, thecrucial role played by such attitudinalfactors as value and need must be rec-ognized.4

Perceptual Defense. Value orienta-tion not only contributes to the selectionand accentuation of certain percepts inpreference to others, it also erects bar-riers against percepts and hypothesesincongruent with or threatening to theindividual's values. We suggest that adefense mechanism similar to repres-sion operates in perceptual behavior.The high thresholds for low-valuewords may result in part from suchperceptual barriers. Not only do low-value words fail to benefit from selectivesensitization, their recognition is alsoblocked by perceptual defense, mecha-nisms. The clearest evidence for the op-eration of such perceptual defensescomes from the analysis of pre-solutionresponses.

Pre-solution responses to low-valuewords appear to take the form of avoid-ance of meaning. As indicated inTable 5, subjects have a pronouncedtendency to see nonsense words whenlow-value stimulus words are presentedfor recognition. Such nonsense hy-potheses'take either the form of mean-ingless words or incomplete segments ofwords. Avoidance of meaning mani-

4 As our experiments indicate, the utility ofthe threshold concept far transcends the meas-urement of sensory acuity where, it is true, suchfactors as value orientation are expressly mini-mized by the investigator.


fests itself even more accurately in thegreater incidence of contravaluant hy-potheses preceding the recognition oflow-value words. Consider some exam-ples. A subject, with little interest inreligious values, when confronted withthe word sacred gives the followingsequence of hypotheses: sucked, sacked,shocked, sacred. Another, lacking inaesthetic values, sees hypocrisy forelegant.

Still another manifestation of percep-tual defense is a frequent failure to usesuch available cues as word structure informing hypotheses. Fewer pre-solutionresponses based on letter structure weregiven to low-value words than to high-value. Reluctance to use structural hy-potheses fits well into perceptual defensebehavior. Formation of an hypothesisbased on structure too easily leads torecognition of the word being avoided.One may inquire at this point, "Howdoes the subject 'know' that a wordshould be avoided ? In order to 'repress'he must first recognize it for what it is."We have no answer to propose. Whatmediates the phenomena of hystericalor hypnotically induced blindness (8,10) ? Of only one thing we can be fairlysure: reactions do occur without con-scious awareness of what one is reactingto. Psychological defense in perceptionis but one instance of such "uncon-scious" reaction.

Value Resonance. The nature of pre-solution hypotheses, no less than recog-nition itself, reflects value orientation."Guesses" are .not haphazard. As fre-quently as possible and as long as possi-ble perceptual guesses are made in con-gruence with prevailing value orienta-tion. This congruence between "guesses"and dominant values accounts, we be-lieve, for the significantly greater num-ber of covaluant responses to high-valuewords.

When stimulus words reflecting the

same values as the subject's preferredhypotheses are presented to him, theyare recognized more-rapidly since theyconform to, or are resonant with, hisgeneral set to respond in terms of hismajor values. That a generalized setlowers the recognition threshold forspecific stimuli within its compass, has,of course, been known since the earlywork of the Wiirzburg School (7, n).Thus, covaluant responses and sensi-tization work, as it were, hand in glove.Covaluant responses, reflecting the per-son's major values, help to prepare himfor recognition of stimuli symbolizingthese same major values. Consider, forexample, the responses of a religioussubject to a religious stimulus word,reverence, at the low exposure time of.01 second; divinity, sentiment, rever-ence. The first two responses, structur-ally unrelated to the stimulus, areclearly covaluant responses. That thesubject recognized the correct word onthe third exposure at .01 second illus-trates the sensitizing action of a gener-alized set.

If the subject's typically preferred hy-potheses reflect a value different fromthat symbolized by the stimulus wordbefore him, his generalized set mayserve to slow down recognition. Hishypotheses, in such cases, may appear tothe investigator as candidates for our"unrelated" category. An instance isprovided by a subject of strongly theo-retical bent who also scores high in aes-thetic and social values but who is lowin economic interest. Confronted withthe word income, he gave these re-sponses prior to recognition at .11 sec-ond: learning, tomorrow, learning,knowledge, literature, learning, loving,income. The exposure of .11 second re-quired for recognition of this low-valueword compares poorly indeed with hisoverall mean recognition time of .03second.


Our aim in these pages has been topoint to the relation of value orientationand perceptual selectivity. The experi-mental evidence leads us to the formu-lation of three mechanisms to accountfor the interrelationship of these phe-nomena in perceptual, behavior. Valueorientation makes for perceptual sen-sitization to valued stimuli, leads toperceptual defense against inimicalstimuli, and gives rise to a process ofvdue resonance which keeps the personresponding in terms of objects valuableto him even when such objects are ab-sent from his immediate environment.These processes of selectivity must beconsidered in any perceptual theorywhich lays claim to comprehensiveness.

REFERENCES

1. ALLPORT, G. W., & VERNON, P. E. A studyof values. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1931.

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3. BRUNER, J. S., & GOODMAN, C. C. Need andvalue as organizing factors in perception.This JOURNAL, 1947, 42, 33-44.

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personal values as selective factors in perception* · ject. the test was given either some weeks...

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