Hypno-Works

There  was a certain wealthy man, a prominent citizen, who was about to

sponsor a  public entertainment. He invited anyone who had some novelty to

perform,  promising to pay them a fee. Professional performers came to compete for

public  acclaim, and among them was a clown [Parmeno] who was well known for

his  sophisticated sense of humour. He said that he had a type of spectacle that

had  never been performed in any theatre before. The rumour spread throughout

the  city, sparking the public's interest. Theatre seats that had recently been

left  empty were now not enough for the gathering crowd.

 

After the clown came out by himself on the  stage, with no equipment and no

assistants, a hush of anticipation silenced the  spectators. Then the clown

suddenly lowered his head towards his chest and  imitated the sound of a little

pig. The sound was so true to life that the  audience maintained that there

must be a real little pig concealed under his  cloak and they demanded that it

be shaken out. But when the cloak was shaken  out, it proved to be empty, so

they lavished the clown with praise and he left  the stage to resounding

applause. 

 

A country bumpkin saw what had happened and  said, 'By gosh, I can do better

than that!' He immediately promised that he  would do the same thing, only

better, the following day. The crowd grew still  larger and favouritism had

already swayed their perception; you could tell that  they had not come to

watch  the performance so much as to make fun of it. The two  men came out onto the

stage. The clown squealed as he had done the day before,  provoking the

audience's applause and shouts of approval. 

 

Now it was the turn of the country bumpkin, who  pretended to conceal a

little pig beneath his clothes -- and this time there  really was a hidden pig,

although of course the audience had not found anything  under the clown's cloak

at the previous performance. The man then pulled the ear  of the real pig that

was hidden in his clothes, producing an authentic squeal of  pain. 

The audience shouted that the clown had given a  far more realistic

performance and they were prepared to drive the country  bumpkin off the stage.

But he then pulled the actual pig from inside his cloak  and showed it to the

audience, denouncing their gross error with  incontrovertible evidence. 'Here

you go!' he said. 'This little pig proves what  kind of judges you are!'

 

The  moral of Aesop’s fable is that people’s expectations, positive or

negative, can  powerfully distort their perception of things.  The philosopher

Plutarch refers to this  fable and comments that, ?it is very obvious, that

similar sensory stimuli do  not always create similar responses in the mind

when there is a belief that the  thing done was not skillfully and ingeniously

performed.? (Essays  & Miscellania,  5:1)

The performer Parmeno is a confident and  charismatic performer, surrounded

by an aura of expectation.  He fools the audience into believing  that his

impression of a pig is better than the real thing, they hear what they  want to

hear.  The bumpkin is  damaged by a negative expectation, despite using a real

pig the audience are  still convinced that his performance is inferior. 

Cognition trumps  sensation.

 

(Donald Robertson)