obserwacja

Jakość obserwacji zależy do tego, kto jej dokonuje. Aby obserwacje dokonane przez dwu ludzi były zgodne, muszą oni skupić się, życie ich nie może być zagrożone żadnym niebezpieczeństwem, ich zasadnicze potrzeby życiowe muszą być zaspokojone, a oglądane zjawisko nie ma ich zaskoczyć. Jeśli mają obserwować zjawisko przemijające, muszą obserwacje wielokrotnie powtórzyć, tym bardziej gdy mają dostrzec nie tylko całość, ale i każdy szczegół.

In discussing the thoroughly unreliable nature of eye-witness observation of everyday events, W. H. George says :

"What is observed depends on who is looking. To get some agreement between observers they must be paying attention, their lives must not be consciously in danger, their prime necessities of life must preferably be satisfied and they must not be taken by surprise. If they are observing a transient phenomenon, it must be repeated many times and preferably they must not only look at, but must look for, each detail."

At a congress on psychology at Gottingen, during one of the meetings, a man suddenly rushed into the room chased by another with a revolver. After a scuffle in the middle of the room a shot was fired and both men rushed out again about twenty seconds after having entered. Immediately the chairman asked those present to write down an account of what they had seen. Although the observers did not know it at the time, the incident had been previously arranged, rehearsed and photographed. Of the forty reports presented, only one had less than 20 per cent mistakes about the principal facts, 14 had from 20 to 40 per cent mistakes, and 25 had more than 40 per cent mistakes. The most noteworthy feature was that in over half the accounts, 10 per cent or more of the details were pure inventions. This poor record was obtained in spite of favourable circumstances, for the whole incident was short and sufficiently striking to arrest attention, the details were immediately written down by people accustomed to scientific observation and no one was himself involved. Experiments of this nature are commonly conducted by psychologists and nearly always produce results of a similar type.

Remarkable demonstrations of the unreliability of visual observations are provided by the tricks of "magicians" and conjurors.

Most men can pass a day in the company of a woman and afterwards have only the vaguest ideas about what clothes she wore, but most women after meeting another woman for only a few minutes could describe every article the other was wearing.