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Intro
Folk psychology is also known as naïve psychology or common-sense psychology (Christensen & Turner 84). Folk psychology discusses human psychology that embraces everyday situations, assumptions, and convictions in regards to concepts of desires, beliefs, hope and fear (Christensen & Turner 123). Folk psychology is the theory that explains how a person’s perception of daily life’s feelings such as pleasure, pain, anxiety or excitement among other feelings explains their mental state. According to Christensen & Turner (165), the theory of the mind that helps in understanding the mental states is termed as ‘theory theory’. It can either be interpreted as internal sense or external sense (Kusch 107).
Folk Psychology Assumes That All Perception Is Perfect
In simple terms, folk psychology is the information that ordinary people hold in their minds also known as the perception. Folk psychology explains and guides a person’s actions and determines how we live our everyday lives (Kusch 118). Folk psychology is said to be confusing since it claims that everyone is naïve and is constantly reading and interpreting their own feelings in addition to figuring what everyone else is planning to do or feeling. Since a human being’s mind is left to determine how to perceive a situation or a feeling, sometimes situations are prone to misinterpretation (Kusch 287). Jerry Fodor remarked that since the role of folk psychology is pervasive in our lives it could be seriously mistaken, which would become a great intellectual catastrophe (Kusch 289).
Misinterpretations
Sometimes a person can misinterpret an event, object or a situation at a lower level (Christensen 284). I once mistook a tree trunk as a person when I was walking at night in a dark path. I was at a distance when I noticed a person hiding beside a hedge. I was scared because I thought he wanted to harm me. I collected a log on the ground as a weapon and proceeded in his direction. When I reached the place he was standing, I threw the log at him but he did not move that is when it occurred to me that it was a tree trunk and not a person. I felt relieved on discovering that it was a misperception since I was very scared. I also felt very stupid and deceived by my mind.
Some people misinterpret events, objects or situations that occurred at a higher level of perceptual processing or meaning-making (Christensen 194). I thought thugs had attacked my neighbor at night because she gave out an outrageous cry. I had slept early and after some few hours heard a shriek coming from my neighbor’s house. I thought gangsters had attacked her but after listening for a few minutes I heard her talking and laughing with someone. I had perceived her cry to be of danger but it was of joy. Although my first reaction was of shock, I later relaxed that nothing was wrong. The two cases though misinterpreted are very different. The first case involves sight and the second one involves hearing. In both cases, both sensory organs send the wrong messages to the brain. Although my wrong perception was meant to alert me of danger, it ended in sending an erroneous message that caused fear.
Misinterpretation can sometimes occur as a result of the expectations an individual was going to perceive. For example, I once had gone to my friend’s house and taken his music system when he was away on holiday. He came back unexpectedly and I did not have time to take it back. When he called me to his house, I was worried he would confront me for taking his equipment without permission. I therefore decided to tell him that I had it up front. He told me to go to his house and was shocked when he thanked me for having it because all the other items were stolen from the house when he was away. At first, I was shocked when he thanked me because according to my expectation I expected a different reaction.
It is possible to misinterpret a situation depending on the psychological state someone is in. I had traveled to my grandmother’s place, which is a considerable distance from home. On reaching, I thought there were ripe bananas in the kitchen and was eager to eat since I was very hungry. However, when I went to the kitchen, there were no ripe bananas but only my cousins applying make-up. The feeling of hunger made their make-up smell like food. I was disappointed because I was very hungry and wanted something to eat which had to wait for few hours before they could cook.
Conclusion
According to the above four cases, it is possible to conclude that sometimes we do not perceive the world as it is. Often our folk knowledge gives us the wrong perception about objects, events, and even situations that makes us doubt the reliability and validity of our knowledge about the world. Our perception indeed deemed most things in the world true. Sometimes perception helps in getting out of situation if it is true. The interaction a person has with the environment gives him the perception through experiences of taste, touch, smell, sound, or sight. Our perception either gives us the accurate or untrue information about the world due to the condition of the body and mind (Christensen & Turner 202).
Although they were initially built to give accurate information, the unnatural lifestyle and environment people are brought up in lead to degradation of senses. It is therefore hard for someone to trust their perception unless they have strong evidence or beliefs.
Works Cited
Christensen, Scott and Turner, Dale. Folk psychology and the philosophy of mind. New York, NY: Routledge, 1993, pp 84-218
Kusch, Martin. Psychological knowledge: a social history and philosophy. New York, NY: Routledge, 1999, pp107-312
Myers, David. Exploring Psychology, 7th Ed., New York, NY: Worth, 2007
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