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Desire Controls What We See, Study Finds
By Heather Whipps
Special to LiveScience
posted: 14 July 2006
10:31 am ET

Without realizing it, people will perceive things according to how they want to see them, a new study suggests.

"There is an age old hypothesis in psychology that a person's wishes, hopes and desires can influence what they see," said David Dunning, Cornell University psychologist and co-author of the study. "This theory had lay dormant for about 40 years, though, without any supporting evidence. We wanted to test the murky waters again."

In five separate tests conducted by Dunning and a graduate student, Emily Balcetis, 412 volunteers from Cornell were presented with an ambiguous picture that could be interpreted as two distinct figures—either a horse's head or the body of a seal, for example. They were told they would be assigned to a taste test of either fresh-squeezed orange juice or a gelatinous, clumpy and rather unappealing veggie smoothie, depending on whether they saw a farm animal or sea creature.

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