Reading Without Prejudice

There we were, the sun was all but set after what had been another gloriously sunny day. The masts of yachts in Alcúdia's marina were silhouetted against the final yellow of the sky as it turned to grey and then black. This was the night of the Kings arrival. It was becoming chilly, as it will do in Mallorca once the January sun has gone to bed, but it had been warm earlier, as it had been for the previous two days; warm, sunny, not the slightest risk of rain and certainly no possibility at all of snow. The AEMET forecasts had been accurate.

It came as a surprise when some of us - three at least - all piped up and said that the forecast had been totally different. Mallorca had, according to this same AEMET met office, been expected to have been freezing over the weekend. Temperatures had been due to go as low as minus eight in Lluc and snow at sea level had been forecast. Where had this all come from? There was absolutely no mention of such weather in the AEMET forecast, I insisted. How could the met office be saying one thing on its forecasts - the ones I had seen - and something completely different elsewhere? It made no sense.

The threesome all said that they had read that this was the forecast. They were as insistent as to the prospect of freezing conditions as I was as insistent that the forecast hadn't been for any such conditions. Where had they read it? They weren't one hundred per cent certain, but the source appeared to have been one particular (free) local publication.

Still baffled by the total discrepancy in the weather forecast, I went and had a look at this particular publication. To my amazement, there, in front of me, was exactly what the threesome had been talking about. But it still made no sense, until I realised what I was reading. It wasn't current news. It was news from last year. From a review. In February last year, freezing conditions had indeed been forecast and were right to have been forecast.

If three people could have failed to appreciate that what they were actually looking at was a reproduction from eleven months previously suggests either that they are blind or the presentation in the publication was not as clear as it might have been. It was probably a bit of both. And I then recalled having been initially foxed by an item from the same publication in the past. For the same reason. It was from a review of the year gone, one back in January 2009.

I wonder how many other people had thought this weekend was going to be freezing. That three people could all make the same error suggests that there would have been many more, and one even odder aspect of this error was that there was also a belief that this freezing conditions forecast had been on Spanish television. I suspect that this was some peculiar leap of reinforcement. There had been no such forecast, but because news of it was in one place, it was imagined to have then been in another place.

All this makes me wonder how we digest information. A publication layout that may not be entirely clear can, or so it would appear, induce misunderstanding. But is it the case that we don't properly read, or that we read what we want to read? I have pretty good reason to believe that we do (and by we, I mean some people). It has happened with things I have written. I have been quoted as having written things that I didn't and had blatant send-ups construed as having been serious.

There can be both a preconception as to what one thinks one is going to read and a prejudicial attitude that manifests itself as a misinterpretation of what has been written. People read what they want to read or think they have read. And occasionally this misinterpretation or misunderstanding is given more power through the invention of another medium saying the same thing, as with the television weather forecast which simply couldn't have been.

Cognitive and psychological research has been undertaken into just this phenomenon. And so it should be. A weather report is relatively inconsequential. But misinterpretation, which can border on the deliberate misinterpretation, and the subsequent dissemination of this misinterpreted message can potentially have more serious consequences.

Read, read and read again, preferably without a preconception or prejudice, and then, just for good measure, check that what you have been reading isn't in fact from eleven months before.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.