What is perspective and how does it affect you, me, us?
There are two forms of perspective, one is visual so how we perceive objects within its 2D, 3D ratios and the other is how we regard something, so our attitude towards something, in easier terms our point of view;
A POV / perspective is a view that involves certain assumptions, i.e., values and beliefs about others behaviour and actions, in psychology there are five different approaches to the mind and how we ‘do’ perspective, there is the biological perspective, psychodynamic perspective, behavioural perspective, cognitive perspective and humanistic perspective. (McLeod, 2013). As McLeod stated, no approach is the correct approach, one approach may fit with a person’s perspective methods and another may not, we are all so different and how we perceive things is how we perceive things and no one else, unless of course it is a shared belief, such as religion or sports.
I saw this quote that kick started this blog, ‘When you finally see what you really mean to a person it’s easier to let go’. It made me kind of brain map outside of my own perspective of others perceived behaviours, I saw the actions and behaviours of others from their perspective instead of my own and I saw how my perspective presumed they felt towards me, my perspective always granted me with love and care because this was presented to me frontally, but then take the words spoken away and leave your perspective with just actions and behaviours, and you see that this person actually does not care about you how you presumed they did, and it’s so like oh wow, and then I started thinking about how our perspective presumes we know things when we actually don’t really know things, we can assume a person is of X,Y,Z nature but in reality it’s the opposite to the behaviour we placed on them, so of course I had to research it;
The thing is with our perspective is it is our own perspective, it is created from experiences and how we have learnt to understand since birth, what you hold as a value may not be the same as others, you may not understand others beliefs and / or values because they don’t match that of your own, or you may blind sight yourself by believing others values are the same as your own, either way our perspective can really place us within a mental health crisis, so I think it is best we understand our perspective and the alter egos it can fail to present
Our perspective can create outlooks that is a bent reality to another’s outlook and this can be ever so confusing for us, our perspective is there to benefit us, it is there to serve us and grant us with the best possible outcome, but sometimes it can create feelings that need not be there, it can also create a scenario that won’t ever happen, it is limitless on its boundaries as it isn’t bounded to one rule, the perspective can stimulate in any way by any cause, it only just shows the complexity within the human mind
I have broken down the different approaches that will help us to understand parts of the perspective and why people may be influenced within their perspectives, and I will discuss how these can be implemented in our own responses to ensure that you have a clear healthy understanding on your perspective for a better mental health
The Five Perspectives
The Behaviourist perspective has an approach that focuses on how the environment affects a person’s POV, this can be by conditioning, classical condition is learning by association, so doing what others are doing, the other is operant conditioning, this is learning from the consequences of behaviour, for example a person may of learnt that throwing litter is okay, so may do this unknowingly, where as a person may have been scolded for leaving litter, here is two different perspectives, both influenced by the environment around them. A person may behave a certain way due to being associated with this throughout their childhood
The Psychodynamic perspective, says that our behaviour is determined by the unconscious mind, so we don’t think before we act, and it is our natural response due to childhood experiences around these causes. So, say someone can get angry quickly, the psychodynamic approach would say this was a natural response as a child, as an adult a person may not of healed this part so may still behave this way
The humanistic perspective suggests that we are each in control of our own perspective and that we have a inbuilt potential to achieve our highest self, we do this by ‘self-actualization’ it means our perspective is our own and we create our own perspective for the benefit of our future self, this is where a person has no limits on perception, there is a lot of change in perception to benefit the future self
The Biological perspective, states that everything is biological, our whole system is passed down through genes, our feelings & behaviours ultimately have a biological cause. This is supported by some conditions such as ADHD being passed from parent to child, and there are other traits that run through the gene pool too
Each approach holds huge significance into explaining the phenomenon of the perspective and how each of our perspectives are different. Each behaviour of your own or another can be explained by at least one of these theories.
It doesn’t mean these theories are the direct cause of some behaviours. I think when we are within mental health crisis we can find ourselves with a jumbled perspective, we can assume people will hurt us, this is conditioning due to maybe being scolded a lot as a child, we can assume people are judging us, this could be due to being bullied.
There are many fears from our childhood that do affect our perspectives, understanding is key
Peace&Love
Referenced from Simply Psychology