Sensory involves receiving the stimulus and interpretation of the stimulus. As demonstrated via inkblot experiments, two persons seeing the same thing may interpret things differently. Further complicating things, we have built-in filters that ignore some deemed ‘non-essential’ stimulus, otherwise we will have sensory overload.
How your interpret things change how you respond to them. As an example, most people are probably fine with trying any new dishes until they realize what they just ate is something exotic like snake, cockroach, baby mice or chicken feet, then they may throw up. Their reaction is greatly affected by their interpretation and not that much by the food itself.
People have done psychological tests. If you get someone in a calm and happy mindset, they are going to be more agreeable with whatever follows. If however, you present them with something that irritates them first, they are most likely to respond negatively to whatever your are proposing next.
When 2 people interacts via physical contact and you ask them what they noticed, the range can vary greatly; from the warmth, the body parts in contact, whether it is soft or a shovel, direction, what happened before the contact, etc. All those together help you make your best guess at the intent and eventually the appropriate response.
Lets switch over to animal kingdom. A lot of birds won’t fly away with joggers who goes right past them. However, they will fly away when a birder tries to approach them. You can probably approach reasonably close to a rabbit if you approach them really slow.
Exercise
All the above are obvious. How are you going to use this for martial arts or self defense?
For those new to this blog, if you do the exercise and send me your response, you will receive an email that have everyone’s reply in there. I consider this exercise very important and is mandatory for everyone taking my kungfu class.