Wishful Seeing

Our eyes may be playing tricks on us: New research shows that sometimes people actually see what they want to see. Social psychologist David Dunning of Cornell University recently devised experiments to test whether wishful thinking can affect our seeing. "It's well established from evidence in everyday life and the laboratory that people think what they want to think," he says. "We're taking this a step beyond. We're asking if desires and fears can influence literally what people physically see."