The forest and the trees

My wife and I are very different in many ways. Some differences are cultural: she is Spanish, I am Dutch; some are gender-related: I am more technical, more into sports and physical stuff (except dancing - tough guys don't dance), and have better spatial skills, she is much better with time; she is better at multitasking, while I - according to her - can barely walk and chew gum at the same time. But quite a lot of our differences are personal. She buys in bulk (and runs the risk of having to throw away stuff), I buy the minimum (and run the risk of having to go back to the store for more). She is too quick to judge, I am too slow. She likes the noise and bustle of the city, I prefer the countryside. She doesn't mind a certain degree of chaos, I am more into on order. She likes experimenting with new recipes and food, I stick to what I know and like.

And we differ immensely in our ability to recognize movie stars. She will recognize virtually any actor she has seen before, regardless of their appearance (including disguises), and usually be able to pinpoint the movie we last saw that actor in. I don't. I might get lucky and recognize the actor's voice if it is distinctive enough (the other day I picked out John Hurt by his voice), but if all I have is the visuals, I might very well sit out the whole movie without recognizing the actor. This is very close to another difference between us: she is much quicker to pick up on the links between words in different languages than I am.

True to form, I have turned these two small observations into the abstract generalization that she sees the similarities, while I see the differences. Interesting, but hardly worth spending too much time on, you might think, were it not for the fact that I think that this basic difference in how we perceive things (input) has important impact on how we interpret things (processing) which in turn has an important impact on our behavior (output). What exactly happens depends on the context. In the case of cognition, for example, this difference in perception mode can result in either seeing the big picture (the forest) or the details (the trees). If we add emotions, we have glasses that are either half full or half empty. And in the case of social behavior (one of my favorite subjects), it results in either competition or cooperation.

Each of the above have immense impacts on how we behave, both as individuals and as groups. Which I why it would be nice to know the root cause of all this. Unfortunately, even though I have been mulling over this subject for years, I am still not much closer to an answer. I have no doubt that it is somehow related to innate sensitivity or receptiveness, and it is obvious that people vary in their receptiveness to certain stimuli (sound, images, words, etc.), but that's about as far as it goes. But I have found out that, although you cannot really see trees and forest at the same time, you can learn to switch from one view to the other. Specialists can learn to see the big picture. I saw this myself while doing my Ph.D., of which a large part focussed on taxonomy (or grouping things): after five years of seeing only the details and the differences, from one day to the next, I was suddenly able to see the similarities.

And this in turn feeds the hope that pessimists can learn to be more optimistic, and those who only see competition all around can learn to appreciate cooperation as well.