From sworn witness accounts of alien visitations, to deep-rooted trust in quack medical treatments, the human trait that psychologists call “naive realism” has a lot to answer for. This is people’s instinctive feeling that they perceive the world how it is, encapsulated by the saying “seeing is believing.” The truth, of course, is that our every perception is our brain’s best guess, built not merely with the raw material of what’s out in the world, but just as much with the bricks of expectation, hope and imagination.

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The key finding is that after reading about naive realism and experiencing visual illusions, the participants were less certain of their personality judgments and more open to the alternative interpretation, as compared with the participants in the other groups. The participants who only read about naive realism, but didn’t experience the illusions, showed just as much knowledge about naive realism, but their certainty in their understanding of the vignettes wasn’t dented, and they remained as closed to alternative interpretations as the participants in the other comparison conditions.

“In sum,” the researchers said, “exposing naive realism in an experiential way seems necessary to fuel greater doubt and openness.”

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