The psychology of the scar

[George K]

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/theory-of-knowledge/202311/what-you-see-is-what-you-look-for

The facial scar experiment provides powerful evidence that people’s perceptions of social interactions arise from their expectations. The setup of the study, conducted by Kleck and Strenta1, is as follows: Participants entering the study are informed that it is about how physical deformities impact interpersonal interactions. To explore this, participants have a significant facial scar placed on them and then are told to monitor the actions and attitudes of the others. A make-up artist puts the scar on the participants’ faces and has them look at it in the mirror. Then, she adds some moisturizer to help prevent cracking, and the participants have some brief social interactions. They later come back and report on those interactions.

Those with facial scars experienced the interactions as being much more tense and patronizing than controls. This makes sense, right? After all, we know people treat people with major disfigurements differently, right?

Well, it turns out that when the make-up artist added the moisturizer, she actually removed the scar. So, the person did not actually have anything on their face. Instead, they simply experienced the relational world differently because they had different expectations of what it would be like.

If you expect to be seen as the victim, you will act as the victim.

[Horace]

Someone on this board has often said that the mainstream racism narratives amount to psychological abuse of black people, especially kids.