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  1. Nov 2020
  2. psychclassics.yorku.ca psychclassics.yorku.ca
    Classics in the History of Psychology -- Munsterberg (1908/1925) "Illusions"
    5
    1. JaelCeballos 16 Nov 2020
      As soon as the signal was given, I lifted with my right hand a little revolving wheel with a colour-disk and made it run and change its color, and all the time, while I kept the little instrument at the height of my head, I turned my eyes eagerly toward it. While this was going on, up to the closing signal, I took with my left hand, at first, a pencil from my vest-pocket and wrote something at the desk; then I took my watch out and laid it on the table; then I took a silver cigarette-box from my pocket, opened it, took a cigarette out of it, closed it with a loud click, and [p. 30] returned it to my pocket; and then came the ending signal.

      With this study, Munsterberg did what in our times is known as The Monkey Business Illusion where some kids play with a basketball, a person dressed in a gorilla suit crosses behind them but the viewer does not notice because we have been told to keep an eye on the ball. The instruction to concentrate on part of the video produces inattentional blindness. Munsterberg was experimenting with that phenomenon.

    2. JaelCeballos 16 Nov 2020
      recognised it as a tuning-fork tone. All the other judgments took it for a bell, or an organ-pipe, or a muffled gong, or a brazen instrument, or a horn, or a 'cello string, or a violin, and so on. Or they compared it with as different noises as the growl of a lion, a steam whistle, a fog-horn, a fly-wheel, a human song, and what not. The description, on the other hand, called it: soft, mellow, humming, deep, dull, solemn, resonant, penetrating, full, rumbling, clear, low; but then again, rough, sharp, whistling, and so on.

      In current cases, many eyewitnesses have a hard time correctly remembering the number of shots fired for example. This article helped start questioning how people not incorrectly remember what they saw but they also incorrectly remember what they hear or suffer from auditory hallucinations. Some of these hallucinations have been found to possibly be caused by fear.

    3. JaelCeballos 16 Nov 2020
      and yet a district attorney hopes for a reliable reply when he inquires of a witness, perhaps of a cabman, how [p. 23] much time passed by between a cry and the shooting in the cab.

      Again, eyewitness testimony is still used to in the courtroom for cases as important as murders and rapes. Even though it has been known that an eyewitness testimony is not reliable, we continue to rely upon it when we decide the fate of a human life. Not too long ago, in 1989, the lives of 5 individuals, Korey Wise, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Antron McCray, and Yusef Salaam were turned upside down when they were convicted of rape based on eyewitness testimony to be later found not-guilty. They became known as The Central Park Five. https://www.history.com/topics/1980s/central-park-five

    4. JaelCeballos 16 Nov 2020
      Wherever real professional knowledge is needed, the door is, of course, open to every variety of opinion, and one famous expert may conscientiously contradict the other

      This is an interesting observation as it still relevant in current times. In almost every trial where there is an expert that renders their opinion, there is always another expert that renders a completely different opinion on the same matter.

    5. JaelCeballos 16 Nov 2020
      Of two unbiassed witnesses, one swore that the time was less than ten seconds; the other that it was more than one minute.

      This is particularly important because of the two witnesses, neither had a motive to lie, they were both unbiased. Yet, they both had a different account to how things happened. This is important to the history of psychology because most of the trials (especially at the time of this article) were heavily based on witness accounts.

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