The Bruner and Minturn Study

The study by Bruner and Minturn (1955) is a key piece of evidence for the role of expectation and perceptual set in perception. It demonstrates how context influences the way we interpret ambiguous stimuli, providing strong support for Gregory's constructivist theory of perception.

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Background

By the 1950s, psychologists were interested in the idea that perception is not a passive process — that what we perceive is influenced by factors beyond the physical stimulus itself. Jerome Bruner was a leading figure in this "New Look" approach to perception, which emphasised the role of motivation, expectation, and past experience in shaping what we see.

The concept of perceptual set was central to this approach. Perceptual set is a readiness to perceive a stimulus in a particular way, based on expectations, context, motivation, or past experience. Bruner argued that perception involves "going beyond the information given" — the brain uses existing knowledge to interpret incoming sensory data.

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The Study: Bruner and Minturn (1955)

Aim

To investigate whether context (the surrounding information) would influence the perception of an ambiguous figure.

Method

Participants were shown a series of characters, either: