Context effects are aspects of psychology that deal with perception, or how the human mind views an object or event. Specifically, the phenomenon addresses the impact of an environmental cue on human perception. Like any aspect of perception, context effects may create a discrepancy between the reality of the object or event and the perception of said object or event.
A stimulus is anything an individual can see, feel, touch, taste, or hear. These are what induce context effects. The theoretical principle of constructive perception states that the human mind integrates various pieces of incoming sensory input to compose an overall mental understanding of an object or event. This view of human thought is known as bottom-up design because one is using parts or aspects as a foundation to build something larger.
The overall study of perception is an important element of cognitive psychology. This branch of psychology emphasizes study and research of human thinking and information processing. Cognitive psychologists believe that many different factors influence an individual’s reasoning capacity, from genetics to learning and memory to environmental factors. Each components works in unison with other components, and therefore these components exercise an inseparable influence on each other. If one were to separate and study the individual components that create a perception through top-down design, context effects would be a major area of study.
The mind’s capacity to integrate its surroundings is one major example of a context effect. In the object-superiority effect, an individual may recognize an object viewed in its entirety but not recognize the same object when it is broken into separate parts. This idea is part of the configural superiority effect that considers how an object’s orientation and composition in a space affects perception.
Many other types of context effects exist. Another instance occurs when individuals perceive the brightness of an object and the apparent luminescence is impacted by the level of brightness surrounding the object. Similarly, other aspects of appearance in surrounding objects may influence how an individual views a certain stimulus. Such a comparative effect is known as analogous context. For example, a slightly obese man may seem morbidly overweight in the presence of a troupe of ultra-thin dancers, while the same man suddenly becomes skinny himself if placed alongside a sumo wrestling family.
Context effects are even present in everyday behaviors. One may act very differently in a library as opposed to a night club. While the individual personality remains the same, the environment — the context — influences actual behavior. As one may see, context effects operate on nearly every aspect of an individual’s life, from the way one views the world to important decision-making.