Question

How do socio-cultural factors influence our perceptions?

Answer 1

Socio-cultural factors influence our perceptions by generating differential familiarity and salience of stimuli as well as certain habits of perception. People living in different cultural settings have varying perceptions like identification of objects and interpretation of depth. For example, in the study carried out by psychologists in Africa and Europe, it was observed that the Africans have a greater susceptibility to horizontal-vertical illusions as they live in dense forests and regularly experience verticality which overestimated.

Europeans on the other hand, have a greater susceptibility to Muller-Lyer illusion as they live in an environment that has right angles. Hence, they underestimate the length of lines characterised by the enclosure.