Things aren't always what they seem!

Talk to anybody that watched the recent World Cup Final and they will probably agree that Holland had tried to kick Spain out of the game. Holland of course cried "foul" insisting that referee Keith Webb had been biased in favour of Spain.

I couldn't see any bias myself but if there was one it could have been to do with the direction that Holland were playing when the fouls were called? It seems that Soccer referees have an unconscious bias towards calling fouls based on the direction of play. According to a recent study into football referees carried out at The University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, there was clear evidence of more fouls being given when play was moving from right to left. The main conclusion drawn being that the mind is conditioned by reading to accept information flowing from left to right as normal...and therefore right to left flow seems instinctively wrong. The study participants were all English Speaking so we assume that Chinese referees would call it differently. 

Many of the familiar optical illusion "tricks" we come across are also answered by this "seeing what the mind expects to see" explanation. And if you want some fun with these follow this link to the exploratory.org and check out their illusions.
In a creativity workshop last week I had fun in an exercise that had us randomly scrawling our representation of various emotions on blank paper. It was interesting to see how some of us came up with similar images for a given emotion.... but that others chose that same shape as interpretation of a quite different emotion.
And the point to emerge from this? 
We see what we think we see... and what you see is possibly quite different to what I'm looking at!
Modern technology has added enormously to business communication but e-persuasion and the "so convenient" emailed pitch is risky!
To make sure you get your meaning across get in front of the people...tell them ...show them ...experience it with them and make sure they do see what you mean.