Questions for you:
- When making decisions based on “what you observed,” how much are you seeing actual data versus patterns your brain constructed from incomplete information to create a coherent perception?
- In the next disagreement within your team or friends or family about “what happened,” can you try to see how conflicts arise because different people constructed different coherent realities from the same incomplete sensory input?
- If most of your perceived reality is constructed rather than directly observed, what does that suggest about the reliability of eyewitness accounts, user observations, or “what customers want”?
- Do you have a favourite optical illusion? Where could you keep a reminder of it about your person or possessions to remind you, randomly, of how your perception can sometimes mislead you?
Organisational applications:
User research and observational bias: Users reporting “what they see” are reporting constructed perceptions, not objective reality. Eye-tracking studies reveal people confidently describe details they never actually fixated on – their brains filled in plausible information. Design research methods that acknowledge this: record actual behaviour rather than relying on self-reports; use multiple observers to triangulate across different constructed realities; recognise that user feedback describes perceived experience (valid), not objective interface properties (unreliable). What users think they saw often differs dramatically from what they actually perceived.
Decision-making from incomplete information: Executives make strategic decisions from drastically incomplete data – quarterly reports, selected metrics, curated presentations. Like vision, which constructs complete scenes from thumb-sized windows, minds construct coherent narratives from fragmentary business intelligence. This isn’t bad – it’s necessary and often works. But remain aware: your confident strategic vision is largely constructed by inference, not direct observation. Make those assumptions, but then test those assumptions; seek disconfirming evidence and encourage efforts at “red teaming” your strategies before you implement them.
Witness reliability and incident investigation: Post-incident investigations rely on eyewitness accounts from people who confidently report details that their brains constructed rather than observed. Multiple witnesses of identical events provide contradictory accounts because different cognitive systems fill different gaps. If your workplace deals with any kind of incident, from minor cases of shoplifting to major cyber security breaches, ensure that your processes account for constructed perception: rely on recorded data over memory, expect honest contradictions between honest witnesses, avoid assuming malice when accounts conflict as different constructions from incomplete observation are normal.
Cognitive load and information presentation: If sharp detail exists only in thumb-sized attention windows, overwhelming users with dense information ensures most is processed through peripheral construction rather than direct perception. Design recognising attention limitations: present critical information sequentially in attention focus rather than assuming your audience can process everything simultaneously. Use visual hierarchies to direct attention to essential elements; always acknowledge that users scanning complex dashboards are constructing impressions from fragmentary perception and extensive gap-filling.
Further reading
Vision, perception, and constructed reality
The Case Against Reality by Donald Hoffman – cognitive psychologist argues evolution shaped perception to construct useful fictions rather than accurate representations, demonstrating how little we directly observe versus how much our brains construct from minimal sensory input.
Sensation and Perception by E. Bruce Goldstein – comprehensive textbook explaining perceptual systems showing vision is active construction from incomplete data rather than passive recording, including discussion of attention limits and gap-filling mechanisms.
The Mind’s Eye by Oliver Sacks – neurologist’s case studies of altered perception demonstrating how brains construct visual reality, showing when construction processes fail, revealing normally invisible cognitive machinery creating coherent experience from fragmentary input.
Attention, cognitive limitations, and constructed experience
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman – discusses attention limitations and automatic cognitive processes constructing coherent narratives from incomplete information, showing systematic biases arising when pattern-completion mechanisms encounter randomness or ambiguity.
The Invisible Gorilla by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons – demonstrates attention blindness showing people miss obvious stimuli when focused elsewhere, proving we don’t see everything we think we see, with implications for eyewitness testimony and decision-making.
Your Brain Is a Time Machine by Dean Buonomano – neuroscientist explains how brains construct experience of reality including temporal perception, demonstrating extensive gap-filling and inference required to create seemingly continuous coherent experience from fragmentary neural signals.
Eyewitness reliability and memory construction
Eyewitness Testimony by Elizabeth Loftus – foundational research on memory malleability and constructed perception showing how questioning shapes what people “remember” seeing, demonstrating witnesses report constructed impressions not objective observations.
The Memory Illusion by Julia Shaw – forensic psychologist demonstrates how memory is constructed rather than recorded, showing eyewitnesses confidently report details their brains invented, with implications for legal testimony and organisational incident investigation.
Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me) by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson – examines how people construct coherent narratives justifying their actions, showing memory and perception systematically revised to maintain consistent self-image, explaining contradictory witness accounts.
Interactive exhibit
Try our Perception Construction Machine: https://experiments.randomthebook.com/illusions/
About the image
The core image is the Scintillating Starburst illusion created in 2019 by Michael Karlovich. The colour gradations that I’ve added seem to heighten the illusion of “rays” emitting from the pattern.
Illustration by Matt Ballantine, 2026
Random the Book 