Problems of the development of artistic vision. The concept of artistic vision

01.07.2020

Each historical epoch demonstrates its own type artistic vision and develops corresponding language means. At the same time, the possibilities of artistic imagination at any historical stage are not unlimited: each artist finds certain "optical possibilities" characteristic of his era, with which he is associated. The dominant ideas of contemporaries (picture of the world) "pull" the whole variety of artistic practices into a certain focus, act as a fundamental basis cultural ontology of artistic consciousness(i.e. ways of being, creative manifestation of artistic consciousness within the boundaries of the corresponding cultural community).

The unity of creative processes in the art of a particular era determines the emergence artistic integrity special type. The type of artistic integrity, in turn, turns out to be very representative for understanding the originality of the corresponding force field of culture. Moreover, on the material of artistic creation it becomes possible not only to discover the characteristic features of consciousness and self-consciousness basic personality of the era, but also to feel their cultural limits, historical boundaries, beyond which creativity of a different type begins. The historical ontology of artistic consciousness is a space in which there is a mutual contact between the artistic and the general cultural: it reveals many "capillaries" of both direct and reverse influence.

The layers of artistic vision, therefore, have their own history, and the discovery of these layers can be regarded as the most important task of the aesthetics and cultural studies of art. The study of the transformation of artistic vision can shed light on the history of mentalities. The concept of artistic vision is quite generalized, it may not take into account some features of a creative individuality. Establishing belonging to the same historical type of artistic vision of different authors, aesthetic analysis inevitably "straightens" a number of distinctive qualities of individual figures, highlighting the common thing that unites them.

G. Wölfflin, who devoted a lot of effort to the development of this concept, believed that the general course of the development of art does not break up into separate points, i.e. individual forms of creativity. For all their originality, artists unite in separate groups. Botticelli and Lorenzo di Credi, different from each other, when compared with any Venetian, turn out to be similar like Florentines: in the same way, Gobbema and Reyedal, whatever the difference between them, immediately become related if they are opposed to the Dutch some Fleming, for example Rubens". The first furrows in the development of the concept of artistic vision, which is extremely fruitful for modern research in the field of cultural studies of art, were laid by the German and Viennese schools of art history in the first decades of the 20th century.

The formulation of this or that problem in culture is always subordinated to a certain historical moment, no matter what sphere of creativity it may concern. Based on this position, O. Beneš, for example, sought to discover in the figurative structure of art certain stylistic (times, which would be common to both art and science. “The history of ideas,” wrote Benes, “teaches us that the same spiritual factors underlie different spheres of cultural activity. This allows us to draw parallels between artistic and scientific phenomena and expect from this their mutual clarification. Creative consciousness in every given the historical moment is embodied in certain forms, unambiguous for art and for science. A vertical is built here: the type of artistic vision is ultimately the implementation of the general cultural parameters of consciousness by means of art. The point is that the methods of artistic thinking and perception, which have established themselves as dominant in art, are somehow connected with the general methods of perception and thinking in which this era is aware of itself.

Artistic vision reveals itself primarily in the form, in the ways of constructing a work of art. It is in the methods of artistic expression that the artist's attitude to the model and to reality is revealed not as his subjective whim, but as the highest form of historical conditioning. At the same time, many problems arise in the way of studying the types of artistic vision in history. So, one cannot ignore the fact that the same people in the same era have different types of artistic vision. coexist. This splitting, for example, can be observed in Germany in the 16th century: Grunwald, as art history studies show, belonged to a different type of artistic implementation than Dürer, although both of them are contemporaries. It can be seen that this splitting of artistic vision was also consistent with the various cultural and everyday ways that coexisted in Germany at that time. This once again confirms the special significance of the concept of artistic vision for understanding the processes of not only art, but culture as a whole.

The sense of form, which is central to the concept of artistic vision, in one way or another comes into contact with the foundations of national perception. In a broader context, artistic vision can be understood as generative source of general cultural mentality era. Ideas about the similar content of the concepts of artistic form and artistic vision were expressed much earlier by A. Schlegel, who considered it possible to speak not only about style baroque, but also sense of life baroque, and even man baroque. Thus, a reasonable idea of ​​artistic vision is formed as border concept, bearing in itself both intra-artistic and general cultural conditioning.

Although the evolutionary processes in artistic creativity have never stopped, it is not difficult to discover in art epochs of intense quest and epochs of more sluggish imagination. The problem is that in this history of types of artistic vision, to be able not only to discern the consistent process of solving artistic problems proper, as this or that author understood them, but also to find the key to understanding the universality of the culture that gave rise to them, to penetrating into the cultural ontology of human consciousness, operating in a given time and space. With the course of history, the problem under consideration becomes more and more complex, since with the expansion of the arsenal of techniques already found by art, the ability of self-movement of artistic creativity also increases. The need to resist the dulling of perception, to achieve an intense impact on the viewer, forces each artist to change the methods of creativity; Moreover, each effect found already in itself predetermines a new artistic effect. This manifests itself voutriartistic conditioning changing types of artistic vision.

All the elements of the form of a work of art do not act as an arbitrary decoration of the content, they are deeply predetermined by the general spiritual orientation of time, the specifics of its artistic vision. In any epoch - both with intense and sluggish imagination - one can observe active tendencies of the artistic form, testifying to its cultural-creative possibilities. cultural(or culture-creating) possibilities of art appear when new ideals, orientations, tastes arise and germinate on the artistic territory, which then spread in breadth, are picked up by other spheres of culture. In this sense, one speaks of cultural typicality art, bearing in mind that art, unlike other forms of culture, accumulates all aspects of culture material and spiritual, intuitive and logical, emotional and rational.

  • Wolflin G. Basic concepts of art history. M.; L., 1930. S. 7.
  • Benesh O. Art of the Northern Renaissance. Its connections with contemporary spiritual and intellectual movements. M., 1973. S. 170, 172.
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Shaikhulov R.N.

The article deals with the formation of a pictorial vision as a necessary component in the professional training of artists-teachers. The author analyzes the features of pictorial vision in comparison with other forms of artistic vision, formulates criteria for evaluating its formation. Based on the conducted ascertaining and forming experiments, a method for its formation is proposed.

In the process of training artists-teachers at the art and graphic faculties of pedagogical universities, one of the special disciplines that form practical artistic skills and artistic vision is painting. The painting program involves the study of all its types, technologies, and fine painting skills. The effectiveness of mastering the program requirements for painting, along with other specific factors, depends on the level of formation of pictorial vision. What do we mean by pictorial vision? How is it different from other forms of artistic vision? What is the level of pictorial vision at various stages of education, and what are the ways of its formation?

It is known that the whole process of artistic vision is divided into three-dimensional, linear, color, pictorial, coloristic, plastic and other forms, each of which has its own characteristics. It cannot be argued that this or that vision is in a “pure” form. The artist sees in nature both color, and volume, and other characteristics at once, simultaneously, but when one of these aspects dominates, then they speak of a certain type of perception. N.Yu. Virgilis, and V.I. Zinchenko note that artists can form two or three or more ways of perceiving.

The basis of pictorial and coloristic vision is color vision. It is inherent in nature, as well as hearing, smell and touch. But it can also be aggravated, developed, or vice versa undeveloped. Initially, a person with a reduced level of color vision or suffering from color perception diseases cannot be a painter, although he can develop other forms of artistic vision. Thus, the developed, sharpened, dominant among other forms of vision - color vision is the basis for the development and formation of pictorial and coloristic vision.

Unlike color vision, pictorial vision is formed and developed only in the process of learning and practical visual activity. Since we can see pictorial relations only by analyzing the state, nature and direction of lighting, analyzing the spatial position, shape, volume and materiality of objects, analyzing their color and spatial relationships. In the process of such analytical perception, color vision is sharpened and a picturesque vision is formed. What does pictorial vision involve in comparison with other modes of vision? “The pictorial style conveys the optical impression of objects, it cares more about the visual image, it is more subjective than in the linear style, which seeks to “understand things and make them effective according to their strong, binding relationship” (...) “Linear conveys things as they are, picturesque as they seem"

Describing the methods and techniques of images in these ways of seeing, G.Welfflin points out that in linear vision, the emphasis is on contours; the image is usually obtained with emphasized edges, i.e. the shape is outlined by a line, which gives the image a fixed character. Such an approach to the image, as it were, affirms the phenomenon.

In pictorial vision, attention is diverted from the edges, the contour becomes more or less indifferent to the eye. The main element of the impression are objects as visible spots. At the same time, it is also indifferent whether such spots speak as colors or as lightness and darkness. Thus, picturesqueness can be possessed as paintings executed in monochrome, which excludes color. Paintings are called the works of many artists, made by means of graphics. Consequently, a pictorial vision does not have to be coloristic at the same time. Picturesque space is, first of all, a spatial environment, the “agent” of which is light and air.

How does a pictorial vision differ from a coloristic one? As you know, color in paintings is a certain system of color relationships that convey a certain state of lighting or the emotional state of the depicted. Coloring is a strict interconnection of all color relationships in a picture and the subordination of these color relationships to the dominant color, and coloristic vision is the ability to see and connect visual impressions that are often scattered in nature into a single color-tone system. Thus, the heightened ability to see “visual impressions scattered in nature” we will attribute to pictorial vision, and the ability to systematize these impressions into a complete picture - to coloristic vision. The transfer of light and air in painting enriches the coloring, gives it an exquisite quality, distinguished by the richness of color vibrations, depending on the color of the lighting and mutual reflections from surrounding objects. Most clearly, all these qualities manifested themselves in impressionism, called by G. Wölfflin an extreme degree of picturesqueness.

Picturesque vision is the ability to see the whole variety of color relations of nature in the finest nuances, in connection with lighting, the arrangement of objects in space, the ability to see the effect of air thickness on the objective environment and, as mentioned above, unlike color, works can also be picturesque, done in monochrome. Therefore, we can say that the pictorial vision is the arsenal of the painter's enriched artistic vision, which he then embodies in a certain coloristic system. Based on this, we can conclude that in teaching students in the initial courses of painting, we, first of all, should talk about the need to form a pictorial vision. That it is necessary to develop a certain system of education, to establish the content and sequence of tasks, the required volume and subject matter of theoretical material.

Based on this, after analyzing the studied theoretical material on the philosophy and psychology of perception, the theory and methods of teaching painting and the educational process in painting at art and graphic faculties, we concluded that the pictorial vision consists of the following components:

  • 1. Developed color vision and understanding of the features of its impact on the perception of the surrounding world.
  • 2. A holistic vision of all color relationships between objects and the surrounding space.
  • 3. Ability to identify the proportional relationship of color spots in the model and on the pictorial plane.
  • 4. Visions of three-dimensional form, chiaroscuro and tone, the ability to sculpt a form with color.

The study contains a detailed analysis of these features and, on their basis, examines the paintings of students in the initial courses, which analyzes the characteristic shortcomings in the works, that is, the level of formation of pictorial vision at the initial stages of education is considered. On the basis of this analysis, the following criteria for assessing the formation of pictorial vision have been developed:

  • 1) Theoretical knowledge of technique, technology, history of painting, color science.
  • 2) Vision of three-dimensional form, chiaroscuro and tone, spatial position of objects, technical skills in modeling the form by means of chiaroscuro and tone, sculpting the form with color.
  • 3) Developed color vision, rich pictorial understanding and vision of color.
  • 4) A holistic pictorial vision of all the relationships between objects and the characteristics of nature. A holistic vision of the pictorial structure of a still life, the ability to determine its dominant color structure.
  • 5) The ability to convey the nature of lighting by warm and cold, warm and cold contrast between illuminated and shadow areas.
  • 6) Ability to work with proportional relationships, vision of color relationships in nature and in the picture.
  • 7) The ability to apply the techniques of working with watercolors in accordance with the tasks set, to combine the techniques of working with watercolors to achieve a planned, textured and material image.

To develop a system of methods for the formation of pictorial vision, we conducted a stating experiment that pursued the following goals: to determine the initial level of formation of pictorial vision; to identify the difficulties of primary students in the process of teaching painting.

For this we have developed:

  • 1) a program of tasks: a series of educational productions, the nature of which revealed certain aspects of the level of formation of pictorial vision.
  • 2) interviews and questionnaires were conducted.

Based on the criteria and parameters developed by us, three main levels of pictorial vision were identified: high, medium, low, and on their basis 3 tables of student assessment criteria were developed: 1) high level, 2) medium, 3) low level with six types of errors. These tables are taken as a basis for determining the characteristic errors in the image of a still life during the ascertaining experiment.

The first task of the ascertaining experiment was carried out by 1st year students at the beginning of training, the second and subsequent ones at the end of each semester until the end of the 2nd year. The study describes the sequence of each task and analyzed the results according to the above criteria and levels of pictorial vision, identified shortcomings. The results of each task were entered into tables and summarized in the following conclusions: about 7% of the experimenters in the 1st year had a high level of pictorial vision, 12% in the 2nd year; an average level of 51% in the 1st year and 65% in the second year and a low level of 42% in the first year, 23% in the second. As we can see, studies have shown that without special training, pictorial vision develops only in individual, the most gifted students, and therefore the development of a special system of methods for its formation is required.

To develop methods for the formation of a pictorial vision, we conducted a formative experiment, which was conducted in two student academic groups of the art and graphics faculty of the Nizhnevartovsk State University for the Humanities for four years. The main training in the formation of pictorial vision was focused on the 1st and 2nd courses, on the 3rd and 4th courses the results of experimental training were checked.

The main tasks of experimental learning relate to three areas of cognitive activity:

  • organization of perception;
  • mastering theoretical knowledge;
  • teaching students practical skills and skills of painting.

Essence organization of perception consisted in active and purposeful observation and study of the color patterns of nature; in the ability to see color differences in relation to each other, to consciously and purposefully consider a natural setting, remembering what is visible for the purpose of subsequent depiction of its color; see and accurately evaluate color changes depending on changes in the environment and light source; take a holistic view of nature.

The organization of the perception of paintings and other works of art that use the expressive possibilities of color consisted in studying the patterns of color construction of the composition, in studying the expressive means of art, including painting.

Practical exercises included: performing exercises, working from nature, by imagination and representation.

In order to acquire knowledge about the patterns of building color harmony, to study one’s own and improper qualities of color and to study the basic technical methods of working with watercolors, we have developed a system of short-term exercises, their peculiarity is that they solve educational problems in a complex. That is, in parallel with the study of the provisions of color science, the “temperature” features of color, such qualities of color as lightness, saturation, color tone, etc., we built these exercises in such a way that when solving these problems, students also mastered the technical methods of working with watercolors.

Part of the tasks related to the image of a still life, we have built in such a way that they are not associated with the image of a specific still life from nature, but are aimed at conveying space, depth and volume by color under the proposed conditions. Here the question is possible, why it is impossible to study this when working directly from nature?

In working from nature, an inexperienced painter becomes his “slave”, that is, he strives to strictly follow the color, the external contours of objects, and cannot abstract from their visible signs. These tasks allow, without attachment to specific objects, to study how color can bring closer and further away, how color can sculpt a shape, convey the state of lighting, so that this knowledge can then be applied to work from nature.

And the second half of the practical tasks consists of still life painting from nature, compiled in such a way that in each task one or another problem of forming a pictorial vision is solved.

After the formative experiment, determining the results of the proposed methodology, we relied on the levels of development of pictorial vision developed by us. In assessing the formation of the level of pictorial vision among students of the experimental groups, a mathematical method of counting according to criteria was used. Grades were given in semester reviews according to the generally accepted five-point system, as well as during experimental cuts in the middle of each semester. As a result of the training experiment, the following data were obtained (Table 1):

Table 1. Results of the training experiment

1 course, 1 semester

EG - high - 30%

CG - high - 6.4%

medium - 52%

medium - 48.2%

low - 18%

low - 46.4%

1 course, 2 semester

EG - high - 30.6%

KG - high - 6.1%

medium - 47.2%

medium - 42.8%

low - 12.2%

low - 51.1%

2 course, 1 semester

EG - high - 23.8%

CG - high - 11.3%

medium - 64.8%

medium - 42.8%

low - 11.4%

low - 45.9%

2 course, 2 semester

EG - high - 39.5%

KG - high - 5.3%

medium - 51.6%

medium - 49.1%

low - 8.9%

low - 45.6%.

Comparison of the results of the work of the experimental groups with the control ones clearly proves the advantage of the proposed system of exercises, confirms its pedagogical effectiveness. We have found that, using a targeted methodology for teaching painting, it is possible to achieve significant success in the development of pictorial vision among students, which develops more successfully when, from the first days of painting, training in color, color, and painting technique is intensified. It should consist, first of all, in an in-depth theoretical and practical study of the laws of color harmony, the knowledge of which enriches the perception of color and contributes to the development of a sense of color - a kind of artistic property that is a necessary component of pictorial vision.

Throughout the entire process of teaching painting in each task, it is necessary to set color tasks related to the modeling of form, the transfer of space and volume. It is necessary to diversify and specify the goals and objectives of each individual task.

In general, the results of experimental teaching of students confirmed the effectiveness of the applied methodology for teaching the pictorial vision of elementary students and the need for its use in the further pedagogical and creative activities of students.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

  • 1. Welflin G. Basic concepts of art history. - M.-.: 1930.-290 p.: ill.
  • 2. Virgilis N.Yu., Zinchenko V.P. Problems of the adequacy of the image. - "Questions of Philosophy". 1967, No. 4, pp. 55-65.

Bibliographic link

Shaikhulov R.N. ON THE FORMATION OF ARTISTIC VISION OF STUDENTS IN THE INITIAL COURSES OF ART AND GRAPHIC FACULTY OF PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITIES // Modern Problems of Science and Education. - 2007. - No. 6-2 .;
URL: http://science-education.ru/ru/article/view?id=784 (date of access: 01.02.2020). We bring to your attention the journals published by the publishing house "Academy of Natural History"

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The artist, however, introduces his penetrating vision into the process of creating an aesthetic image, as we have already said, his emotional attitude to the depicted. His vision in this regard remains inevitably deeply subjective, it bears the imprint of his personality and therefore, like any other expression of the mental disposition of the individual, it can be both consonant and dissonant with social aesthetic ideals, it can be both progressive and truthful, and reactionary. and false. Reliance on the unconscious provides the artist with a specific sharpness of vision, but the interpretation he gives to what he sees, the meaning that he gives to his works, are determined by his personality. Therefore, the artistic veracity of works of art is by no means guaranteed by the possibilities created by relying on the unconscious. This truthfulness is not a function of the peculiarities of the psychological process of creating an aesthetic review, but of the place that this image occupies and the role it plays in the system of aesthetic values ​​of the era.

Only taking into account these circumstances, it seems to us, it is possible to methodologically adequately interpret the presence of the irrational in art, to understand the impossibility of abstracting from this irrationality when considering the psychological process of the formation of an aesthetic image and, at the same time, the indeterminacy of this irrationality of the social value of the work of art created by the artist.

(2) With what we have said above, we tried to emphasize the full depth of the connection between the processes of artistic creation and the activity of the unconscious. We also noted that the understanding of the role played by the unconscious in this regard was only approached after the development of more rigorous psychological concepts of the functions of the unconscious had begun.

In Soviet literature, as is well known, the development of the concept of the unconscious for many decades has been associated with the name of D. N. Uznadze, with the idea of ​​a psychological attitude substantiated by this thinker and his school. Based on the theory of the psychological attitude, it turned out to be possible to introduce the spirit of objectivity and experimentalism into the difficult area of ​​ideas about the unconscious and to subordinate the consideration and interpretation of these ideas to the principles and logic of the cognitive process in its strict scientific understanding. We cannot now linger on the general characteristics of this conceptual approach; it has already been discussed on various occasions in the introductory articles to the previous thematic sections, and we will return to it in the final article of the monograph. We will emphasize only two aspects of the concept of unconscious mental activity that are directly related to the idea of ​​a psychological attitude and come out especially clearly when the connection between the unconscious and art is examined.

This is, firstly, the possibility of the artist's simultaneous existence of a number of differently and even contradictory directed unconscious psychological attitudes - a circumstance, abstracting from which it is often impossible to understand either the genesis or the functional structure of the aesthetic image created by the artist; secondly, the possibility of the manifestation of the unconscious - due to the different nature of psychological attitudes - at different levels of organization of artistic creativity: both at the highest levels, at which the content of created aesthetic images is the mental activity of a person in all the complexity of its individual and social manifestations, and at more elementary, in which the aesthetic value of the image is determined primarily by its physical properties (geometric structure, color tone, etc.). The involvement of the unconscious in the creative activity developed at each of these different levels turns out to be largely due to the polymorphism of psychological attitudes, their representation at all levels of the hierarchy of mental states, from those expressing personality traits to those determined directly by physiological influences.

If we do not take into account these two characteristic features of the activity of the unconscious, we can easily fall into a one-sided and therefore simplified understanding of its manifestations. Let us dwell first on the first of these points.

At a symposium held in France a few years ago, specifically devoted to the problem of the relationship between art and psychoanalysis, various aspects of this complex topic were touched upon. One of them, which caused a lively discussion, was directly related to the issues we are discussing.

In the report by N. Drakoulides “The Work of an Artist Subjected to Psychoanalysis”, a question was raised and very straightforwardly resolved, returning us to the original ideas of Freud. The author of this message defended the thesis according to which the artist's work is stimulated by painful experiences that have fallen to his lot. Following Stendhal’s thought “art needs people who are a little melancholic and rather unhappy,” N. Dracoulides argues that studies of biographies and creativity make us consider frustrations and deprivations of all kinds, especially those that have the character of fairly deep mental trauma, acting on the artist’s talent as a kind of catalyst that increase the potential of talents. With this understanding, artistic creativity appears as a special form of overcoming mental conflicts and adapting to life's failures. When traumatic experiences smooth out or disappear, the incentive to create also weakens. Neglecting the considerable dangers that are usually associated with overly broad generalizations, N. Dracoulides does not stop even at such a peculiar socio-psychological generalization as: "art flourishes among peoples less happy."

What is a creative work - a picture painted by an artist or a piece of music that evokes in us a feeling of admiration and inspiration? Is it all from a simple desire to show us something new, something different, or is it a human desire to express what the artist himself saw and others could not see? As Pablo Picasso once said: “Some see what is and ask why. I see what could be, and I ask why not? The main point of this saying is that some people see more possibilities in the things around them than others. And this is precisely the central link of the concept of creativity.

When testing creativity, psychologists often resort to divergent thinking tests. For example, a person is told to come up with as many uses as possible for the simplest things, like an ordinary brick. If a person is able to come up with many options and combinations of using ordinary bricks (up to creating a coffin lid for a Barbie doll out of it), then the test will show that such a person will have significantly more divergent thinking than someone who believes that bricks can be used only for solving ordinary tasks like building walls and buildings.

According to the same research, openness to experiences, or simply openness to new experiences, is the aspect of our personality that stimulates our creativity. Of the five major personality traits (extraversion-introversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to experience), openness is the best predictor of our performance on divergent thinking tasks.

As American psychologists Scott Barry Kaufman and Carolyn Gregoire point out in their book Wired to Create, people's desire for creativity "comes from a desire for cognitive exploration of their own world and the world around them." The curiosity of a comprehensive study of certain things can lead to an increase in the level of openness of a person to see the world around him differently compared to average people. Or, as other researchers of this issue say, “the ability to see the complex of possibilities that lie unnoticed in the so-called established “familiar environment” for other people.”

creative vision

A study published in the Journal of Research in Personality found that open people don't just try to see things from a different perspective and express their point of view, they actually see the world around them. different from ordinary people.

The experts wanted to find out if there was any connection between openness and such a phenomenon as binacular competition. This phenomenon occurs when two different images are presented to each eye at the same time, such as a red color card and a green color card. When viewing both images by an observer, a visual effect will be created for the latter, in which the card shown for one eye will, as it were, pass into the other eye and vice versa. That is, at some point it will seem that both eyes see either a green or a red background.

Interestingly, for some participants in such an experiment, it may seem that both backgrounds either merge, or one is superimposed on the other, creating a kind of structured image, as can be seen in the central picture above. And such moments of binacular suppression, when both images become visible at the same time, can be explained as an attempt by consciousness to find a “creative” solution to a problem presented in the form of completely different visual stimuli (cards with different background colors in this case).

In experiments, researchers found that open people were able to see merging or overlapping images for a longer period of time than average people. Moreover, the effect lasts even longer if a person is in a good mood at that moment, which, according to earlier studies, also plays an important role in creativity. Based on these observations, the researchers concluded that open people's creativity extends down to basic visual perception. And such open people are able to experience a fundamentally different visual experience compared to the average person.

See what others don't see

Another well-known perceptual phenomenon is called inattentional blindness. People can experience it when they focus on something so much that they literally stop noticing other things right in front of their eyes.

A great example of this perceptual glitch is an experiment in which people are asked to watch a short video. On it, several people throw a basketball to each other. The observer is tasked with counting the number of passes between players dressed in white.

At some point, a man in a gorilla suit appears right in the center of the frame, and then leaves. Did you notice him? If not, don't worry, you are not alone in this. About half of the 192 participants in the original study also failed to notice the man in the gorilla suit. But why do some people experience inattentional blindness while others do not?

The answer to this question has only emerged from recent research, the results of which show that susceptibility to inattention blindness depends on your personality. And open people are more likely to notice a gorilla in the frame. Again, from this we can conclude that more visual information penetrates into the process of conscious perception of the surrounding world in people who are more open - they are able to see what others do not notice.

Open your mind. Is it necessary?

It may seem that open people have more options than others. But can people who initially have non-creative personality traits expand these opportunities? And is it really necessary?

There is convincing evidence that a person can be built, molded like clay and made the way you want. Increased openness of perception is observed, for example, after specialized cognitive training using the substance psilocybin (a chemical compound present in some hallucinogenic mushrooms). In less drastic examples, increased openness is often seen in students studying abroad, which just reinforces the notion that travel helps expand your mind.

But in fact, in the "openness of consciousness" not everything is as rosy as it might seem at first glance. Psychologists often associate openness with certain aspects of mental illness, in particular with an increased tendency to hallucinate. There is a very fine line between being able to see more and being able to see what is not there. In general, having a variety of personalities is good. It is important to remember that one person's point of view is not necessarily better than another's point of view.



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