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Do we all see the same thing? How much of what we see is influenced by expectation. Bugelski & Alampay's (1961) research identified the importance of expectation when looking at perceptual set. Perceptual set theory (reference) is when individuals perceive and notice some stimulus, while ignoring other stimulus

The aim of the experiment was to determine how perceptual set impacts our interpretation of ambiguous and unrelated images.

It is hypothesised that when shown an ambiguous image of a frog/man, perception will be influenced by prior images those who are shown animals will see a frog, those who are shown people will see a man.

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Fifteen university students were randomly assigned to three groups. Group one, 5 participants were shown 4 images of animal drawings and then the ambiguous stimulus. Group 2, 5 participants were shown 4 images of people and then the ambiguous stimulus. Group 3, 5 participants were shown only the ambiguous stimulus. All participants were asked to identify what they saw in the images.

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Results of this study demonstrated that participants who had been primed with the four animal pictures were more likely to interpret the fifth ambiguous image as depicting an animal (4 out of 5 participants), whereas participants who had been primed with the four pictures of human faces were more likely to interpret the ambiguous fifth image as a human face (3 out of 5 participants). All participants who did not view a priming image interpreted the ambiguous image as a human.

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The experiment determined that perceptual set was affected by expectations. The majority of participants, when shown the animal set of images saw a rat and when shown faces saw a man. This highlights how context can affect perceptual set.

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This study appears to support the hypothesis that a priming picture provides context and influences the interpretation of an ambiguous stimulus. In future, it may be beneficial for studies to examine why individuals may interpret an ambiguous image as depicting a human, rather than an animal or inanimate object (as was the case here). Limitations include small sample size of 15 people and participants were not tested for prior knowledge of this experiment (which may have influenced their interpretation of the ambiguous stimulus).

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Bugelski, B. R., & Alampay, D. A. (1961). The role of frequency in developing perceptual sets. Canadian Journal of Psychology/Revue canadienne de psychologie, 15(4), 205–211. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0083443

https://www.simplypsychology.org/perceptual-set.html