Tok Knowledge Essay

How, and to what extent, might expectations, assumptions and beliefs affect perceptions?

To begin this essay, we need to know what perception is, so that we can be able to link how expectations,assumptions and beliefs affect it. Perception is a source of knowledge, used to understand and interpret thing based on your five senses: touch, smell, hearing, sight and taste. This may sometimes helpyou take the right decisions and recognize anything on our environment because of the information we already know.
Expectations are the strong beliefs that something will happen or be the case.This means that you are sure that in the future something will happen according to what you have heard and relate with your knowledge. This affects perception, because sometimes your expectations aboutany topic are so strong that it may change they way you see things or interpret anything that could happen in the future. A clear example of this is the theory of 2012. According to the Maya calendar,the end of the world will be on the last Friday of December on 2012, in which the whole Earth will be destructed by the devil, and every soul living will die.
We are not sure if this event willhappen, but every single person on Earth who is afraid of this destruction is having expectations for this day to come. Because of this many people is scared, and even some of them are starting tobelieve in God so that they could be save.
Another factor that affects perception is an assumption. Assumptions are possibilities assumed as true. What this means that if you are in doubt of something,you may think it’s true based on what you know about it and what you want to assumed of it. Perception is affected by it in a way that you could make in your mind the idea that something is true, eventhough there are no probes or no arguments that could support what you think.
This happens all the time in our daily life. It has happened to me when I needed to deliver an assignment via internet....