How Vision Shapes Our Perception and Behavior

Summary

The Brainy Business Podcast

Understanding the Psychology of Why People Buy
Episode 538: How Vision Shapes Our Perception and Behavior
Host: Melina Palmer
Date: October 7, 2025

---

Brief Overview

In this episode, Melina Palmer delves into the psychology of sight and vision, emphasizing how these processes profoundly shape not only our consumer behavior but our beliefs about possibility and reality. She breaks down the subtle (and often unconscious) ways our brains interpret—and misinterpret—visual information, translating it into powerful takeaways for business branding, marketing, and leadership. This episode is positioned as a foundation for an upcoming interview with acclaimed coach Sean Brosnan, tying the science of perception to the psychology of breaking boundaries in sports, business, and beyond.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Dominance of Sight in Human Perception

• Visual Processing in the Brain:
  • Sight occupies more brain "real estate" than any other sense—about 25% of your brain is devoted to processing visual input.
  • Staggering Stat: 70% of the body’s sense receptors are in the eyes.
    • “You would still be too low by a lot. In reality, about 70% of the body's sense receptors are in our eyes. Whoa.” (05:00)
• The other senses (touch, taste, smell, hearing) share the remaining 30%.

2. Sight vs. Vision: The Crucial Distinction

• Sight: Raw data gathered by the eyes.
• Vision: Interpretation of that data—constructed in the brain, influenced by expectations, prior experiences, and cognitive shortcuts.
  • “The sense of sight takes place in the eyes…But vision does not actually happen in your eyes. Vision is in your brain and is much, much more complex than sight.” (04:10)

3. How the Brain Predicts & Fills Gaps

• The brain uses past experiences to “guess” what’s in front of us—explaining how we read sentences with missing letters, or interpret impressionist paintings as coherent images.
• Optical illusions demonstrate these shortcuts:
  • References to “the dress,” color illusions, and Beau Lotto's TED talk about how the brain evolved to see what was useful, not what was necessarily real.
    • “The brain did not evolve to see the world in the way that it was; the brain evolved to see the world in the way that was useful to see in the past.” (15:10, quoting Beau Lotto)

4. Impressionist Art as a Metaphor for Perception

• Paintings by Monet and Degas changed as their eyesight deteriorated, yet the mind of the viewer is able to interpret their blurry brush strokes as water lilies or dancers.
• The artists’ adaptations (arranging paint by number, painting from memory) show both the adaptability and the limitations of visual perception.

5. Depth Perception and Binocular Disparity

• Explanation of how two eyes contribute slightly different data, producing depth perception.
  • Demonstrated through the classic “close one eye at a time” test.
• Relates to how 3D glasses and movies trick the mind using color filters or polarization.

6. Selective Attention and Inattentional Blindness

• The Invisible Gorilla Experiment:
  • When focused on counting basketball passes, up to half of viewers completely miss a person in a gorilla suit walking through the scene.
    • “The tests showed that actually about half—half of the people did not see the gorilla walk into the middle, pound its chest, and walk away…because people were told to focus on white.” (35:25)
• Similar real-life scenarios (e.g., swapping people behind a registration desk) highlight our brain’s tendency to miss obvious changes due to focused attention.

7. Reality is (Literally) in the Eye of the Beholder

• Example: Two people can simultaneously look at the same ocean view and remember seeing very different things.
• What’s considered “reality” is actually a construct based on what our subconscious flags as important.

8. Visual Metaphors and Emotional Associations

• The Rorschach inkblot test: What you see is a function of your experiences and associations, not the “reality” of the image.
• Emotional connotations (e.g., a red rose) are pulled instantly from the subconscious.

9. Visuals in Branding, Marketing, and Sales

• Images Over Words:
  • Strong images can communicate more than words; too much text causes consumers to disengage.
    • “You can say more with a lot less if you have a strong and strategic image with a lot less words.” (44:05)
• Eye-tracking: People instinctively follow the gaze of faces in marketing images.
• Investing in professional, intentional visuals is critical; poor images or cluttered visuals undermine credibility subconsciously.
• When crafting ads, focus on a single outcome—clear visual cues and a succinct message outperform overloaded ads.

10. Practical Applications & Business Takeaways

• Physical Spaces: Plan where the eye is naturally drawn, utilizing “the cathedral effect” (people look upward).
• For video, remember that most are watched on mute—subtitles, visual clarity, and lack of background distractions are vital.
• Every visual interaction influences memory and engagement with a brand.

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Expectations and Predictability:
  • “Our brains use shortcuts, especially when it comes to predictability and perception.” (01:17)
• On Selective Attention:
  • “This is what keeps us from basically being stuck in the fetal position all the time because we can’t handle all the stimuli around us.” (34:00)
• On Business Implications:
  • “If two ads say exactly the same thing but have different layouts or images, they will perform differently. And this is why you need strategy and testing to understand how the brain is going to interpret the stimuli you put in front of it.” (46:00)
• On Challenging Mental Limits:
  • “While that can be helpful in business—say, creating trust through consistent visual cues and branding—it can also quietly reinforce internal limits without us even realizing it.” (47:52)
• Thought-Provoking Close:
  • “What patterns are your brain clinging to because they feel visually or mentally predictable? And what might change if you challenge that expectation? If you gave yourself permission to see or visualize something new?” (49:14)

---

Timestamps for Key Segments

• Sight vs. Vision Distinction: 04:00 – 06:00
• Optical Illusions and the Dress: 13:00 – 17:00
• Impressionist Painters’ Vision Changes: 18:00 – 22:00
• Depth Perception, Binocular Disparity, and 3D Glasses: 24:00 – 28:00
• Selective Attention, Invisible Gorilla, and Inattentional Blindness: 33:00 – 37:00
• Rorschach and Meaning in Visuals: 40:00 – 42:00
• Visuals in Branding and Business: 43:00 – 47:00
• Psychology of Belief and Visioning the Future: 47:30 – 48:55
• Reflective Close and Call to Action: 49:12 – 49:47

---

Overall Tone & Style

• Conversational, engaging, and full of real-world examples
• Equal parts science educator, business coach, and enthusiastic storyteller
• Frequent direct appeals to the listener: “What do you see?” “Have you experienced this?”

---

Takeaways for Listeners (Who Haven’t Heard the Episode)

• Vision is a constructed, expectation-driven process that goes far deeper than just “seeing.”
• The brain’s shortcuts can both help and hinder—in marketing, they underline the power of visual priming and the importance of consistent, strategic imagery.
• We must be intentional with every visual element in business—excellence here is non-negotiable for trust and engagement.
• Challenging your assumptions—what you “see” as possible—can unlock breakthroughs in business and life.

---

Ready to put these insights to work? Melina recommends examining your own visual branding and being mindful of what your customers’ brains might be seeing, predicting, and missing—and to carry forward an awareness of how your own mental images can limit or liberate what you believe is possible.

---

For more links, resources, and recommended episodes:
Visit thebrainybusiness.com/538

Connect with Melina Palmer:

• Social: @thebrainybiz on all platforms
• LinkedIn: Melina Palmer

Transcript

[Melina Palmer]

Welcome to episode 538 of the Brainy Business Understanding the Psychology of why People Buy Today's episode is all about the sense of sight and the invisible ways it shapes behavior. Ready? Let's get started.

[Podcast Announcer]

You are listening to the Brainy Business Podcast where we dig into the psychology of why people buy and help you incorporate behavioral economics into your business, making it more brain friendly. Now, here's your host, Melissa Melina Palmer.

[Melina Palmer]

Hello. Hello everyone.

My name is Melina Palmer and I want to welcome you to the Brainy Business Podcast. You may already know that the brain is constantly processing far more than we're consciously aware of. But did you know that sight takes up more real estate in the brain than any of the other senses? What we see or think we see can completely change how we feel, decide and behave. In this episode, I'm bringing back an early foundational solo episode in a series.

I did on the Five Senses.

We're talking about sight as well as vision, which you will learn today are not the same thing at all. I love talking about this for a lot of reasons.

One of them is because it's really able to reveal something powerful about how.

Our brains use shortcuts, especially when it comes to predictability and perception. So why am I revisiting this episode today? Well, in just a couple days, I'm going to be sharing a brand new interview with the legendary high school running coach, Sean Brosnan. His story is all about vision in a different sense, helping his athletes push past what they thought was possible and rewiring the limits their brains had been trained to expect, to see a new vision for themselves and their entire sport. In a way, this episode lays the foundation for that by showing how our brains rely on what we've seen before to shape what we believe is possible now. Our visions of the future, whether that's in life, business, running, or anything else.

As you listen today, I encourage you.

To think about your vision of the future, what you see as possible or impossible in that context, and keep that.

In mind today and as you prepare.

To listen to the next one with Shawn Brosnan really quickly. Before we get into today's episode, I.

Want to be sure you know there.

Are links in the show, notes for my top related past episodes and books, ways to get in touch, and more. It's all within the app you're listening to and@the brainybusiness.com538.

Now let's jump right.

In and learn about sight and vision.

You are familiar with the senses, of course. Maybe you first Learned about them when you were in kindergarten, definitely from a young age. And you might might think you know all you need to about your senses, but there's oh so much more to know and it absolutely impacts your business. As I said at the top of the show, I'm starting with sight because it is the most impactful. About a quarter of your brain is.

Involved in visual processing.

And when I say vision is the most impactful of the senses, let me break that down for you a little more. Of your body's sense receptors, what percentage do you think are in your eyes? You might guess that because there are five senses, each would get 20%. And then because I said your sense of sight was the most impactful, maybe you give it a little more and get to a third 33% and anchoring and adjustment in action right there. But you would still be too low by a lot. In reality, about 70% of the body's sense receptors are in our eyes. Whoa. That means the other four senses are fighting over the remaining 30%. Best case scenario, they would each get seven and a half percent, which is one tenth almost of of what the sense of sight gets. You know how I always say your subconscious is very visual? Well, now you know why. And those 11 million bits of information per second that it's processing, a lot of that is coming through your eyes. This impacts your business in all sorts of ways. But before I get to that, going to tell you some more about how the eyes work and how that relates to the brain. First, I have a question to ask you. Is vision in your eyes or in your brain? While we tend to use the two words interchangeably, in reality, sight and vision are two different things. The sense of sight takes place in the eyes. It's all the little bits of information coming into them. But vision, vision does not actually happen in your eyes. Vision is in your brain and is much, much more complex than sight. As I will show and explain to you in the coming examples and explanations. Vision is actually built on expectations in the brain based on past experience, just like everything else your brain does. I'm going to reference a lot of fascinating articles and TED talks throughout the episode, which are all linked in the show notes. And as I said earlier, because we're talking about the power of seeing things, it kind of helps if you can see what I'm talking about. So if you have not checked into the show notes before, you definitely should. For this episode, you can either go now or afterwards, simply Visit the brainy business.com 24 and access the links, or if you're listening to this in a podcast app, they're there as well and you can just give them a tap and check them out. And on social media, I'll be linking to blogs and posts and things about them. So a little more about the difference between sight and vision. The sense of sight is bringing in a lot of stimuli that it can't actually interact with. Light, color, contrast in a big flood of information all the time. I kind of have been, as I've been working on this episode, I've been thinking about in the Matrix, when he looks at the screen and sees ones and zeros and the other guy says, oh, really, all I see, you know, I said, redhead, blonde, brunette. He's able to look past the ones and zeros to see the information behind. It's kind of like that little nerd moment for you there, I guess. The process of interpreting that information is a task for the brain. This is where the data points are sifted through to choose what is important, categorize by what is expected, and project the information back to make decisions quickly. You know those tests where you're shown a sentence with letters removed and you can still read what it says? Says? That is a trick of the concept of vision. Your brain is projecting what letter should appear in the space based on past experience and allows you to read the word without actually needing all the letters to be there. You're able to get the gist without needing all the information. And it's often right, but sometimes it guesses and uses that information wrong, as with all the rules of thumb your brain uses. Again, vision is taking place in the brain and not in the eyes, so it's not a perfect representation of the world around you. So as I'll talk about later in the episode, in business applications, when you feel you have to really explain everything that you can, all the information about your product and really making those connections, tying things together, the brain is going to fill in the gaps a lot of the time. And so knowing that it might not need to be exactly step by step by step, because it's going to make these summaries for you again. The eyes are still essential for vision, but they're bringing in lots of raw data that don't mean anything until they're processed. Think about a spreadsheet with thousands of individual data points. They don't mean anything until you process the information. This is like sight and vision. So what are the pieces of information made up of? Our eyes do a lot of amazing things, and I am not an expert in eye anatomy, here I am simply explaining the relevant concepts and applications to help you understand how the brain processes stimuli from the eyes. I've linked to a bunch of articles with more detail on all the parts of the eye. But the first thing that matters for us here. Here is the retina. Inside the retina are photoreceptors. Perhaps you've heard of rods and cones in your eye. They are shaped differently, hence their different names, because they do different things. Rods are sensitive to dark versus light and cones are sensitive to color. While I'm not going to get into color theory here, that is going to be the topic of its own episode later, and it will be soon because you have been asking for it. I do want to talk a little about color projection and how optical illusions work. Have you ever seen those images where one side, if you were to split like a piece of paper in half, one side is black with what looks like a white square in the middle, and the other side is white with what looks like a black or very dark square in the middle? And then you see that when the backgrounds are removed, they're actually the same shade of gray. Or the infamous dress, which basically broke the Internet a few years ago when half the world insisted it was white and gold and the other half insisted it was blue and black. These are color illusions where the items surrounding the object in question trick the eye and the brain into seeing a different color color. When it looks like something is in shadow, like there's a table there, our brain makes it look darker, for example, even when it's the exact same color as something right next to it and it is drying so there actually isn't a shadow. You know, it's your brain projecting what it expects to see based on what it has experienced in the past. I've linked to a really awesome TED talk called Optical Illusions show how we see where. Beau Lotto does an amazing job of explaining how this works within the brain and what's happening. And he has a ton of examples to show them all. It's really fascinating and it's about 15 minutes in the actual content of it. One of the best quotes, I think in that video is when he says the brain did not evolve to see the world. And in the way that it was, the brain evolved to see the world in the way that was useful to see in the past. This is why illusions can trick the eye, because it's constantly interpreting data and then projecting that vision for us to be able to be kind of one step ahead based on what it's known previously. Okay, so next, let's talk about focus. If you think about taking a picture with a camera or any of the images in portrait mode, where the main figure is crisp and clear and everything around it is fuzzy or blurred, and that just looks so beautiful and amazing, you're really able to focus. It's because that's how our eyes interpret information all the time. The highest resolution is near the middle. That's what you're focusing on. And. And detail goes down as we see further distances on the periphery, which is your peripheral vision. I want you to think back to the example I gave about missing letters and your brain still being able to get the full word. Have you ever experienced a picture or a painting from a distance and been able to tell exactly what it was? And when you got up close, it was a bunch of dots with big spaces in between, like on the side of a bus, for example, with advertisements, our brains fill in that missing information using vision. But the predictions still count on the information coming through the eyes. So you need that stimuli to come in for it to be able to make a prediction. And let me give you an example. I love, love, love, love, love, love impressionistic paintings. They're my absolute favorite. And I've had the honor of being able to visit Monet's home when my husband and I went to France last year. And I've seen countless water lily paintings in person. I love them all. And Blue Dancers by Degas, don't even get me started. I could talk about these paintings all day. But did you know that the style of these paintings, the ones I love so much, so many of us love so much, are actually, in many ways, because of diseases in the eye. Monet's early work was full of blues and purples, which are almost completely absent from later work. And the brush strokes got progressively thicker and more blurry as time went on. The colors got muddier, kind of brown. And this is because he had cataracts and actually had multiple surgeries on his eyes to try and correct it. But he lost the ability to see those col or with as much crispness as he had earlier, even though he was painting the same pond on a property where he had lived for over four decades. Without the ability to see clearly and in full color, his vision could only piece together so much as he was turning it into a painting. He kept his paints actually in a specific order on the palette and would number them, so. So he knew what he was painting with, even if he could not see the colors properly. When he was trying to go off of memory. But he lived on this property. He loves painting this space. So he wanted to be out and to see the. The bridge and the water and everything. And you can see how that transitions over time. His cataract developed when he was in his 70s, and so he has many, many. There are many years of amazing paintings that are much more crisp. And much to the chagrin of lovers of his art, he actually threw away many of the paintings he created in those last 10 years of his life because he felt that they weren't representative enough of the really true beauty around him. So what about Degas? He actually developed retinal disease at the age of 36 and could not be in intense light, which is why he began painting inside the ballet and opera houses. And he also started to have blurred vision. So his work, which was once so crisp, began to have blurred lines and less details in the faces and textures and things over time. Even though the images are blurry, we still know what we're looking at when we see these paintings. When you see a Monet or a Degas, your brain can tell whether you're looking at a pond or a ballerina, which is truly amazing when you think it's just a bunch of random blotches of paint. And the brain can piece together what it's supposedly looking at based on prior experiences and being able to pick out things around you and interpret that into a concept of a person wearing a tutu or a lily on a pond. Just think if they had stopped painting or drawing when they had received their diagnoses, how different our world would be today. It's fascinating. Our brains are actually conditioned to see and pick out faces, which is why we sometimes see them in strange places like grilled cheese sandwiches or cloud formations. This can either be to see predators or to understand allies. That's why we've evolved to have this skill. The information coming in through our senses allows us to know immediately if the thing in front of us looks menacing and we should run or friendly. So we should approach. And this is partially because our eyes are on the front of our head instead of the side, like a deer. Being able to focus forward in this way with both eyes pointing in the same direction, but slightly in separate spots, is what creates our depth perception. And this is why optical illusions work for a drawing on a flat sheet of paper or chalk on the ground. And it can look like it's three dimensional. If you've ever seen where people can put, like, stickers on the floor and it looks like you're going to fall into pond or something along those lines. Or there have been really cool pieces of artwork where when you look at them at just the right angle, they look perfect, and every other angle they look really weird and stretched out. It's because the brain is actually interpreting the stimuli coming through the eyes, and it doesn't matter that it's actually flat. It creates this vision of what we see based on the past rules of thumb and what it expects the information is supposed to look like regardless of what's actually coming in through the eyes. Think about 3D glasses. Have you ever stopped to wonder why that actually works? I mean, from the original version of one red filter and one blue filter, why does that make things look like they're coming out of the screen or that there's depth back beyond the flat wall? This is because of binocular disparity, which is just those two eyes in different spots that see slightly different things, but are both pointing in the same direction. The way our eyes are set up, the easiest way to see this in action is to look at something in front of you. It can be anything. So right now, pick something like, I'm at my desk. I'm going to look at my water bottle that's sitting here. Or you could look at your phone in your hand. And if you look at it and close your left eye, but keep your right eye open, and then without moving your head or the object you're focusing your attention on, you want to simultaneously close your right eye while you open the left and then switch back and forth. Do you see how the object appears to move from left to right even though you know that it and you are not moving? That is binocular disparity. When you look at things with both eyes, the data coming in combines in the brain to explain what we're looking at. So you have stimuli coming into your right eye, stimuli coming into your left eye through this sense of sight. It gets combined in your brain to then make this singular picture of what's in front of you. And that is what creates depth. So why is there color on those original versions of 3D glasses? What does that have to do with anything? The way they have this set up is that when a movie is shot in 3D in this traditional format, it has two slightly offset images that were filmed separately, but at the same time. One is red and the other is a bluish or cyan. And when they're laid on top of each other and you're wearing the glasses, the filter that screen, the lens that you have on there, with one eye only taking in the red images, the other takes in the blue. Because of those lenses, your eye is able to react to its environment very quickly. And so if it's only taking in blue, the other side's only taking in red. It's then creating this piece of depth that makes it appear three dimensional. When those two images combine in the brain, if you take the glasses off, it might give you a headache to watch the screen. And it just looks really weird and kind of blurry and strange colors. But you can see the distinct blue and red images. If you look closely enough with the glasses on, they completely fade away, which is really amazing if you think about it. There is in the new glasses that don't have red and blue, if you're curious how that works, they use polarization. I've linked to a video in the show notes that tells about more detail on what I just told you about the original 3D glasses and then the new polarization and how that works. And you can actually sort of see it in the video, which is pretty cool. So this shows you how your two eyes are actually bringing in, like I said, separate pieces of data. And the information only makes sense when it's combined bind in the brain. Which kind of makes you ask the question, what's 3D and 2D in the real world? If something that's flat can look three dimensional, if something that's three dimensional could look flat. If you close your eye, you know it's all about depth perception. And this is the same reason why with the way that our eyes can adjust so quickly that if you need bifocals, you can have laser eye surgery in 1:1 eye to correct for distance, but have the other to help you see close up. And it takes a couple of weeks for the brain to get used to seeing this way. But eventually it can interpret the information around you and know to only use the information from the far away eye when looking at distances. And the other eye for close up, it's going to rewrite this new rule. And it's just amazing when you think about it. If you've been seeing with two eyes for let's say 50 years and you change absolutely everything, your brain knows that it can rely on what these rules are about both eyes and it can learn this completely new approach of just relying on one eye in this situation. And these are the times to rely on this other eye in just a couple of weeks. It's really just very cool and amazing. One reason this works is because your brain is constantly scanning and interpreting information. And, and a lot of that, like I've said, is coming in from your eyes. You don't realize it, but your eyes scan the world around you on average three times every second. That means when you think you're just looking at your computer screen or looking forward on the road while you're driving or walking, your eyes are actually moving all the time and checking the environment for threats or interesting tidbits. If nothing of note is going on, it doesn't alert your conscious brain because it doesn't need to know. But the information it is taking in is impacting your behavior whether you realize it or not. This is why priming, which was the focus of episode 18, impacts behavior. And people don't realize it or would say that it had nothing to do with any of their actions. And it's why people will say they never pay attention to ads in Facebook feed or watch commercials, but they're absolutely having an impact on them, as studies have shown. Your brain is taking all that in and evaluating it, even if it doesn't hit your consciousness. But when the brain wants a distraction or something really cool or enticing pops up, then you notice it, right? Ever wonder why that one thing caught your attention? How fortunate you are that that came up at the exact moment when you needed it? It's because nothing else mattered enough to flag the conscious brain. You saw everything else. It just wasn't important enough to your in your subconscious's opinion to make a flag. It's why when you buy a green car and you start to see them everywhere. And why? The truth about pricing is that it's not about the cookie and the order things are presented in matters. But we'll get into that more on the episode. About scent, you might ask. If our eyes are constantly scanning the world around us, why do we not see big blurry blobs all the time? It's because vision is in our brain, of course. We have evolved so that we can focus on something and constantly scan our environment for threats or potential stimuli through saccades. Saccades in our brain, is that they are why things like flipbooks work. Our brain weaves together a stream of basically still images and connects the missing pieces to create a steady flow of movement. It predicts what is missing to make it look and feel as if it is constant. It's pretty cool, right? And this is what it's doing all day, all the time, which is why it can adapt pretty quickly on a flipbook, if you notice, you know, the first couple of images look like they're broken up, but then it starts to move. It's because it's learning from what it's seeing and in the environment around it. And when you're focused on things like reading a book, the eyes do move around less, only 10 to 20% of the time. So you can have some attention but still be aware of the world around you. If you're scanning objects in the distance, your eyes will probably move around more because there's a lot to look at and take in and evaluate. When I was a kid, I did a lot of acting and spent many summers growing up as actually an extra on the set of movies that were filmed in the Seattle area. My dad traveled a lot, which is sort of a necessity for an airline pilot. And so my mom had jobs with flexible schedules, so she could often take us with her on those jobs. And one of them was at a casting company, which meant we could all be on set together. Anyway, I learned something about this when I was on the set for Prefontaine. And I didn't really understand the science behind it at the time, but it's something I never forgot. So that movie is about the first star runner signed to Nike back in the 1970s when he was at the University of Oregon. And needless to say, there were a lot of people running around the track and they were filming the actors watching people run, or they're supposed to be when filming often there's going to be a close up of someone's face, the actor, and they're having a reaction to something that might be as far as we perceive when we're watching a movie. It's like they're talking to someone that's right in front of them, or they're watching something in the distance, but they are actually acting like it's there. And when it's being filmed, you know, the person they're talking to might not actually be standing in front of them, but when someone is supposed to be watching someone, let's say, walk, if there's nothing for them to actually watch that's going to be moving along that same path in the distance, the camera will actually pick up their eyes darting all over the place. And they don't move in a smooth line. And this is a biological thing. You can't act your way through it. You can't control your eyes to not do that without something to focus on. So when the actor on camera is supposed to be watching something go from one side of the shot to another. They need to actually watch someone or something go from one side to the other. This gets the extra focus of attention that is needed so that the eyes don't look weird and shifty. And so if you realize once you can capture someone's attention with your marketing, your advertising, whatever it is, for even just a second, that extra focus is so much more streaming information coming into the brain that's going going to be able to be reacted on and processed. Even if they're not thinking, they're taking a lot of conscious action. The brain focusing for just a split second can actually create a lot of benefit for you and your brand if you can do something that's interesting and different. So with so much going on around us, our brains need to deploy selective attention to only flag the conscious brain of what matters, which I've talked about before. This is what keeps us from basically being stuck in the fetal position all the time because we can't handle all the stimuli around us. Often our brains miss huge and glaring crazy things when we're told to focus on something else. I'm going to talk about an experiment here. And if you want to experience this next thing before, before I explain it to you, I want to give you a chance to do so. So if you're at a point where you want to stop and watch a video, this is a good time. I've embedded a video in the show notes page of the website the brainybusiness.com 24. It's about 90 seconds long. If you want to hit pause and go watch that really quick before I explain what happens. But it's been around for 20 years or something, so it's not like it's completely brand new thing. So I will be here when you get back. It's about selective attention. Okay, welcome back. For those of you who left and for those of you who didn't go watch the video, let me tell you what happens. It starts a video with six people in it. Three are wearing white T shirts and three are wearing black T shirts. Presumably they're on teams because one person in a black shirt and one person in a white shirt has a basketball. And. And the instruction the video gives you is to count how many times the people wearing white shirts pass the ball to each other. And you probably think this is easy. I can count passes of people in white shirts. What a dumb task. But you want to prove you can do it correctly because that's how our brains work. You want that dopamine of will I be able to get this and so you start counting, and you might even lean in a little toward the screen to make sure you really get it. You're super focused on the video. 1, 2, 3. And then it stops and goes to a black screen and asks, how many passes did you count? And then you would say your answer. And then it comes up and says the correct answer is 15 passes. And then it asks, but did you see the gorilla? It then rewinds and shows you that a person in a gorilla costume walked into the shot from the right side a few seconds in, went into the middle of the circle, pounded its chest a few times, and then walked to the left off screen. When you know it's there and you aren't focusing on counting the passes to people in white shirts, it's super obvious. And everyone would say that they would see it, but the tests showed before it became really famous and people knew what to expect, that that actually about half. Half of the people did not see the gorilla walk into the middle, pound its chest and walk away because it was wearing black shirts and people were told to focus on white. It's crazy. And they have a ton of other fun videos on this topic on their website and in the book the Invisible Gorilla, which I have linked to in the show notes. If you've ever been to a networking event or conference and you walked up to a registration table and you talked to someone for a minute, and then they pointed to something in the other direction, say, look, the entrance to the event is over there. And in the split second while you turned away, that person ducked under the table and a completely different person was to pop up and finish the conversation, would you notice? You might think you would, but due to selective attention and inattentional blindness, a lot of people don't. Even if the new person has different colored hair or is wearing a different colored shirt, they are focused on the task at hand, the person that's having the conversation. And everything else is just part of the periphery, this sort of blurry space, and less important. And it's not being fully interpreted by vision, even though it's coming in through your sense of sight, which is why if you're walking down the street and maybe a taxi cab is in focus because it's coming toward you, and then you're focused on a bicycle or whatever it is and everything else, you don't really realize that your eye is blurring your vision around you of everything else. But some of the videos I've tagged here in the show notes show how you can witness the way that your eyes do this. It's really fascinating. So this all leads me to ask you, what is reality? Do we all live in the same reality, or is my reality different from yours? If I say A and you say Z, can we both be right? To answer these questions, we're going to start with another experiment. I want you to imagine we're in a room together. We're in a tall building, and there's a big window facing the ocean. It's a beautiful, clear day, and we have unobstructed views. We're both going to look out the window for 30 seconds and then describe what we saw. Maybe I would turn to you and say, it's windy out right now because I watched this beautiful sailboat move along at a pretty good pace. And you'd say, what? I didn't see a sailboat, but I saw some trees, and I didn't notice them moving around. I don't think there's wind. And then I might say trees. What kind were they? Maybe they're the kind that don't blow in the wind. The sailboat was definitely moving. And you'd say, I'm not a tree expert, but I saw a tanker on the water, and it wasn't moving much and there weren't waves. And maybe you don't even believe now that there was a sailboat. You would have seen it, right? I mean, maybe I'm making it up to trick you and make you feel dumb. And now we're at an impasse because we can't be saying different things and both be right. Right. Miscommunications come up often because we're unwilling to believe that our way is not the only way and that multiple people and perspectives can still be right, that we can see an entire scene. And you think you have this perfectly amazing photo memory of what's around you, but in reality, we don't because of this difference between sight and vision. And the things that my subconscious will flag and feel are important and log into memory are not the same. If you're even at just a slightly different angle, it can make a real difference. This is the way that I can see something, and it's not the same as you, and that's okay. We can both look at the same scene and see two completely different things. We actually probably both saw everything, but our subconscious brains cared about different things in the moment and focused attention differently based on our experiences and the meaning that comes with that. So what about that meaning we assign to the things that we see? Our brains can often attach Meaning to all sorts of things when they aren't there. Think about a time a significant other said, we need to talk, and you spent hours or days agonizing over what that means before you had the real conversation. That's all in your head, but really, so is everything else. So here's an example of this in action, using visual imagery. When you think about someone going to be evaluated by a psychiatrist, if I was to say, what do you think they're going to do? What tests? One suggestion you might come up with is an inkblot test where you're shown a sheet of paper with a bunch of blotches on it and you're supposed to explain what you see. I might look at an image and see a bear, and you look at the exact same image and you see a dog or a person or a butterfly or a train. This happens because of how our brains process information. And the test is not about the image. Spoiler alert. It truly isn't a picture of anything. It's about the explanation and what associations your mind makes. These associations are simply triggered by a strange image your mind is trying to make sense of and the process of explaining your thoughts as you look at it. This is another example of how two people can look at the exact same thing and interpret it in two completely different ways. And this is why a picture is worth at least a thousand words. I would say that is an understatement, to be honest. Our visually fueled subconscious is scanning and taking in all sorts of stimuli for the brain to interpret, including the emotions and other contexts that might come into play. I've given the example of a red rose in past episodes. If I was to show you a picture of a red rose, the brain has all sorts of ties to that, including the emotional attachment of red roses, anniversaries, Valentine's Day, Grandma's perfume, or Mom's rose garden. And it's almost as if they're actually there in front of you. Our brain mostly thinks in images and emotions and processes them constantly and basically instantaneously. That visual stimuli is really the same for the brain, whether it's a picture or a physical rose in front of you. And this is why Pinterest and Instagram are so popular. You can scan through countless images and take in what's there without really taking in anything at all. Because this is what your brain does all day anyway. And if photos are worth a thousand words, video is worth more. It stops you and makes your brain say, ooh, even for just a second. When it comes to your brand and business, it is worth investing in great images. Do not use clip art or stretch out images to fit a size so that your logo or a person's face is stretched out, the brain will pick up on the discrepancy immediately and it assumes that you're an amateur. Whether they articulate it or not, whether they know it or not, it happens. And our eyes are trained to look at other eyes and follow their gaze. Check out some of my social media content. You can find me, like I've said, on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter as the brainy biz. Or you can go to my website, the brainybusiness.com, check out YouTube. I have professional images that were taken by the great Jennifer Findlay of me with brain or alone. And if you notice I'm often looking or pointing up at words that I want you to read and the other images that jump out at you where you actually read or digest words. If you were just to scan through Instagram or Pinterest and see what are the things that make you want to say stop, they probably have this too, this pointing or something that is drawing your attention to what you're supposed to look at. And it's because our brains want to look where others are looking or pointing. Revisit episode 19 on hurting to learn more about this okay, I'm pretty sure I've said this about a million times and I will say it a million more, and you've heard it a million times from me and other people, but it's still logically hard to accept this. So please listen to me when I say this. Next thing, it's very important you can say more with a lot less if you have a strong and strategic image with a lot less words. Again, you can say more with a lot less with a strong image and and a lot less words, especially if there's strategy behind that image. Our brains are used to interpreting and thinking about visual stimuli and too many words make it shut down and ignore the whole thing. Then it gets bored or stressed and wants to play Candy Crush or check out Instagram for a minute. Check out episodes 21 and 22 on Habits to learn more about this. I know many of you have listened to episode two, the top five Wording mistakes Businesses make, because it's the second most downloaded episode on the podcast. In it, I have categorized the different mistakes, one of which is too much. Basically, everything has too much copy. Let's say I want to run a Facebook ad. What's the point of it? Sure, I want people to know about my podcast and like the Facebook page and follow me on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to the YouTube channel and get on my email list and book a discovery call so we can talk about a virtual strategy session and I can have them convert to a playing client. But I can't ask for all of that in one advertisement because it's overwhelming and crazy and to try to say all of that to people and they will simply say nope and not take in any of it. There's far too much going on. It's way too easy to ignore what's out there and not take in anything when it's words. Instead, I need to decide the word, one thing they should do and then put everything just pushing toward that same effort. So let's say I want this ad to be for my online course of launching a brain friendly podcast. How am I going to get them with the visuals? And can I add a little movement? Maybe using a GIF or the Boomerang app to catch attention? Does the image show someone celebrating and throwing money in the air because they're converting so much? Or maybe an image of downloads with a constant uptick showing how many subscribers they're getting, or a bunch of people raising their hands and looking happy? The right image can do wonders and the wrong image can kill an advertisement. And I might just need a couple words to say get a this course or want a podcast that converts, you know, and then you get the image and you want it like click here. Want a podcast that converts click here and it's got the image that their brain understands and pieces together all this other information of what I'm trying to say, what they're going to get, the emotions, the feelings, the imagery, it builds this whole picture when it has a really good image and just a slight little tweak of information of what they're trying to do. If two ads say exactly the same thing but have different layouts or images, they will perform differently. And this is why you need strategy and testing to understand how the brain is going to interpret the stimuli you put in front of it to create a vision of what you're trying to communicate. At the end of the day, our lives are a string of memories, including the way we interact with brands. Brands are just memories. And because the memory is heavily composed of visuals and emotions, the visuals you choose to use in your business and branding will impact how people think of you, your business and your brand and whether they take action or not. This is also why we need things like speaker reels I can say I'm flown in to speak at all sorts of conferences to diverse audiences and I can show quotes from members of the audience, what they've said. Or I can say people rate me really high. But having a simple image of five filled stars says a lot more than I could in words. And a video of me actually on a stage helps someone to see my personality and experience it in a way that words just don't convey. And if you think that visuals aren't important, consider this. 85% of videos are watched without sound on Facebook and other social media channels. I'm sure I don't know if I have ever intentionally turned on the sound while watching videos and Instagram. It's kind of more annoying when they just pop up and have sound on them. And if I can't get the point without sound, next scroll away. So what does your video look like with the sound off? Subtitles can help, but not every video gets that. And is your video interesting enough to make someone want to click on it or turn on the sound? Do you look compelling without the sound or is it confusing and weird and the brain is going to step away? What's going on in the background? Can people see the messy desk or a crooked painting or something else distracting? Because the brain will focus on that instead of you. You need to take a step away. Don't just set up your camera and start talking or take a a photo. You need to look at everything around you as if you're looking at it for the first time to understand what could be distracting for other people. And this matters in physical locations too. Consider where the eye goes when people walk into your store and where you have different pieces of information laid out. Where products are we have been conditioned to look up when we walk into buildings due to the cathedral effect. So what do they see if they look up? Can you draw their attention upward to signage with a very clear message? Be very intentional about where you want people to look, what the process is, and the next steps. Whether in an advertisement or a physical space, it's the same concept. Have intention, strategy, strong visuals, less text, and one next step that everything is putting pointing to, sometimes literally.

So what got your brain buzzing as you learned about sight vision and how they're so different today? One thing that always sticks with me is just how much our brains rely on predictability. We like what we've seen before, what feels familiar, what seems to fit.

And while that can be helpful in.

Business, say, creating trust through consistent visual cues and branding, it can also quietly reinforce internal limits without us even realizing it. In today's episode, we talked about how visual priming influences perception, the importance of color, how sight dominates our sensory processing, and how the brain uses shortcuts based on what's expected. That's powerful on its own, but when you zoom out, it's not just about product presentation or customer behavior. While that does matter, but it's also about how we as humans navigate possibility. And that's why this refresh felt so timely for today. The conversation I'm going to share next with coach Sean Brosnan goes beyond the behavioral science of buying and into the psychology of belief. His athletes broke records because they could imagine visualize something more. They learned to see a reality that.

Didn'T exist yet and then build it.

Step by step by step by step.

The same concept applies in business, in.

Life, leadership, and yes, even in the subtle ways our brains process visual information. So here's a question to carry with you as we close out the episode today. What patterns are your brain clinging to because they feel visually or mentally predictable? And what might change if you challenge that expectation?

If you gave yourself permission to see.

Or visualize something new? I'd love to hear your reflections. Please come share them with me on social media.

You'll find me as the Brainy biz.

Pretty much everywhere and as Melina Palmer on LinkedIn. There are links in the show notes.

To make it easy, along with links.

For my top related past episodes, books and more. It's all waiting for you in the.

App you're listening to and atthe brainy.

Business.Com 538.

And just like that, episode.

538 on the Sense of Sight is done.

Join me Thursday when I sit down.

With Sean Brosnan to discuss his new book Beyond Fast and how it applies in life and business.

It's going to be a lot of fun.

You don't want to miss it.

Until then, thanks again for listening and learning with me. And remember to be thoughtful.

[Podcast Announcer]

Thank you for listening to the Brainy Business podcast. Molina offers virtual strategy sessions, workshops and other services to help businesses be more brain friendly. For more free resources, visit thebrainybusiness.com.