Seeing Is Not Always Knowing: The Limits of Visual Authority

"Humans are born to help. In fact, helping behavior in humans evolved from the psychological processes that motivated mutual cooperation in ancestral hominids. The evolutionary origins of cooperative helping gave rise to social and cultural practices, norms, values, etc., that govern cooperative helping in humans today. The combined influence of biological, social, and cultural factors underlie the strong impulse to help that most of us experience when we see someone in need."

"This impulse can misfire, as it sometimes does in situations where nondisabled people try to help people with disabling impairments, such as blindness. Sighted people often feel confident that their vision provides more reliable knowledge about their surroundings than blind people get from their nonvisual senses. Blind people, on the other hand, claim that their training gives them the cognitive skills needed to gain reliable knowledge about their surroundings. The result is miscommunication and, often, highly stressful interactions."

Humans possess an innate biological drive to help others, rooted in evolutionary processes that promoted mutual cooperation among ancestral hominids. This impulse is reinforced by social and cultural practices, norms, and values that govern helping behavior today. However, this well-intentioned impulse frequently misfires in interactions between sighted and blind people. Sighted individuals often rely on confidence in their vision as superior knowledge, while blind people possess trained cognitive skills for reliable environmental understanding. This disconnect creates miscommunication and stressful interactions, particularly for blind individuals who repeatedly encounter these situations. Addressing this requires sighted people to recognize blind people as experts in their own experiences.

Read at Psychology Today