The precise circumstances surrounding the death in Minneapolis of Renee Nicole Good continue to be passionately debated across the world, with wildly different interpretations of the shocking images.

Millions of people are examining the exact same video feed, and yet many insist on opposite conclusions.

How is this possible?

Is it just politics? Do we merely see what we want to? Or could there be some deeper psychological issue manifesting?

Our visual perception is indeed much less reliable than we realise. Might this resolve the conundrum of how we can all view the same material, yet in fact see entirely different things?

Psychologists’ experiments surprise and challenge us, revealing dangerous overconfidence in what we believe we saw.

In one famous early study, subjects viewed films of car accidents, and were then asked about what they witnessed, just as people are questioning now, what they saw in Minnesota.

But if the inquiry was posed as "About how fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?" this elicited a significantly higher perception of speed in the answers than when the question was framed as "About how fast were the cars going when they hit each other?" On a retest one week later, those subjects who were asked about smashed cars were more likely to respond "yes" to the question "Did you see any broken glass?" even though broken glass did not exist in the accident.

Changing just one word in an apparently innocent question significantly alters what witnesses think they see. We are very suggestible and can be manipulated into believing we saw something that never existed, surprisingly easily.

Perhaps this precise psychological effect is even happening right now, in newsroom studios across the nation, as the issue is hotly debated, using emotive language.

But not only can we be profoundly influenced in how we see the world in ways below our conscious awareness, but our focus can also be much more selective than we realise, meaning we can still completely miss an event........

© Psychology Today