The myth of the shared reality: How culture shapes what we perceive
In public communication, we often assume that even if people disagree, they are at least looking at the same reality. We believe facts are obvious, messages are clear and meaning travels easily from sender to audience.
In multicultural communications, this assumption defines how campaigns are designed and measured. When a message fails to land, we often blame mistrust or misinformation. But we rarely ask a more basic question: Are audiences even noticing the same things to begin with?
Perception is not universal
Research in cultural psychology suggests that this shared reality is far thinner than we tend to believe, and that culture does not just influence how people interpret information but also shapes what they perceive as important or relevant.
Culture organises our attention. It structures how we scan our environment, what we prioritise and how we derive meaning.
Analytic vs. holistic thinking
Social psychologist Richard Nisbett famously identified two distinct ways of perceiving the world:
Western Cultures (Analytic): Tend to focus on individual objects, separating them from their background. Meaning is found in the object itself.
East Asian Cultures (Holistic): Tend to perceive the world as a whole. Meaning comes from relationships, context and the background environment.
The underwater study: A lesson in attention
In a well-known experiment, participants from the United States and Japan were shown animated underwater scenes of fish swimming among plants and rocks. The results were telling:
The description: American participants began by describing the focal objects (There was a large fish swimming to the right). Japanese participants began with the context (There was a pond with plants and rocks).
The memory test: When the background was subtly changed, Japanese participants struggled to recognise the fish they had seen before. For them, the fish and the background were inseparable.
The eye-tracking: Data showed that Japanese participants spent significantly more time looking at the background, while Americans fixated almost immediately on the central object.
The most consequential aspect of these findings is not simply that people perceive differently, but that they are largely unaware they are doing so. This is where the myth of a shared reality does its most powerful work, allowing one perceptual style to be treated as neutral, while others are framed as deficient, inattentive or incorrect.
The hidden hierarchy of perception
The most significant finding isn't just that we see differently—it’s that we are unaware we are doing so.
This creates a perceptual hierarchy where one style (usually Western) is treated as the neutral standard. Other styles are then incorrectly framed as inattentive or incorrect. In a communications context, this has material consequences for:
Visual design: Where do you place the most important information?
Narrative structure: Do you start with the ‘big picture’ or the specific ‘call to action’?
Definitions of clarity: What feels ‘simple’ to a Western eye may feel ‘incomplete’ to a holistic viewer.
From assumptions to alignment: Designing for different realities
Most failures in CALD (Culturally and Linguistically Diverse) engagement don’t stem from a clash of values—they stem from a mismatch of perceptual priorities. What a campaign designer considers the headline might be filtered out as background noise by an audience with a holistic cognitive style.
Recognising that reality is not shared is not an admission of defeat, it is a call for a more deliberate, scientific approach to communication.
Strategies for building cultural resonance
To bridge the perceptual gap, communicators must shift from broadcasting information to constructing visibility.
Audit for visual hierarchy: Use culturally informed research to map where your audience’s attention naturally lands. Do they look for the who (object) or the why (context) first?
Prioritise visibility over accuracy: A message can be 100% factually accurate but 0% visible if it is placed in a cultural blind spot. Testing should focus on what users notice, not just what they understand.
Embed meaning through co-design: Move beyond focus groups. Actively involve community representatives in the layout and narrative phase to ensure the relationship between content and context feels authentic and intuitive.
What feels common sense to us is often the most culturally specific thing we know—and therefore, the easiest thing to get wrong.
Is your messaging truly visible?
At Cultural Perspectives, we help organisations look beneath the surface of mainstream communication to navigate the complexities of human perception. We ensure your message isn't just sent—but seen.