There are all kinds of people in this world, and all kinds of mindsets. You can be a bigot, you can be an absolute scum bag or ridiculously open-minded.
What if we told you that there is now scientific evidence to back the claim that your open- mindedness literally changes the way you see the world. Studies now show that personality traits not only change your outlook on life, but also change the way you perceive reality.
According to a study published in the Journal of Personality, open-minded people literally see things differently than their close-minded counterparts. The study was conducted in a Melbourne University in Australia where a group of people underwent a personality and visual test.
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In this analysis, each eye is shown a different image. In the present study, one eye was shown a red patch and the other was shown a green patch. Most people react to the test by naturally reducing their focus to only one of the images. However, those who tested high in openness showed an ability to visually perceive both images at once, combining the patches into one unified red-green image.
So basically people who scored high on open-mindedness were more likely to perceive this unified image. So our personality sort of affects the way we filter conscious experience.
This is not the first study to link personality with perception. An earlier study shows that those who score high in openness are less likely to experience “inattentional blindness.” This visual phenomenon occurs when people are focusing so hard on one feature of a scene that they completely fail to notice something entirely obvious— like in the video below:
There is also evidence that personality traits are not fixed and change with time and hence, our perception of reality may also change with the change in our basic traits, but there are very few scientific studies to back that claim.
The study may have its drawbacks, but for now, it is fascinating to know that there is a great possibility that our personalities may be affecting the way we look at the world, and different personalities may actually be viewing the world differently.