This Poll is directly related to the evidence given during Bella Santos' Bail Hearings in this case. I want you to assume that you're walking down the street and you pass a person whom you've never seen before in your life. What part of that person do you notice first? This is not a trick question but, assuming you are a normal, stable individual, there is only one right answer. I am not going to influence the Poll by telling you which part of the body you, perhaps subsconsiously, do notice first until we have some results.
After so many years in my job I tend to be looking more and more at body language and what people wear, as this tells me with a high degree of accuracy if it is worth investing my time in trying to sell them a few cases of expensive wine. Sad, huh...? .
I am always aware of the bodies walking around me. So I can say if a man or a woman walked past me, but unless I glance up to their face I would never be able to say what they looked like.
If it happened to be a man and a woman for example, I would certainly be checking out certain features of the woman.. I would definitely be able to identify things like cup size,hips,arse and legs quite accurately. My memories of the man would probably be very hazy. Just saying.
In general I tend to walk along looking at the ground and my attention is there also so I would usually see someones feet, but this would not always be the case so there is no fixed answer, also from a safety viewpoint I will in part look into the distance and asses my surroundings but anyone viewed from that kind of distance all I am seeing is the trunk their posture and movement as there is not enough detail to determine much else.
I think it depends a bit on our mood and circumstances we are in. The situation we are in etc. Not necessarily a straight answer here.
I will certainly look at their head and upper body, and the thing that I will notice will be their face. If the person is wearing a veil, I will notice that immediately. If their appearance is somewhat like that of other people nearby, I will notice them less than if they are very obviously different, thus in Hong Kong on the MTR last Friday I did not really notice that the people surrounding me were Chinese, but I did notice the handful who were not, and when in Molave two weeks earlier I did not register the fact that I was the only non-Filipino in the place.
Thank you to those who voted and/or posted replies, I guess you'd like the answer According to behavioural experts, the first feature our eyes note when passing someone is more often than not their face and we may not even be aware of that and that's normal human behaviour. We will then look at the general body outline and the brain uses that, together with the image of the face, to calculate whether that person represents a threat. We rarely look at the legs or feet, apparently, and certainly not initially. Even if we are preoccupied with our own thoughts and notice someone approaching us, our eyes will (almost) always momentarily focus on that person's face even if our memory is that a large anonymous man passed. I said that this has significance in the Ella Joy case. One of the two witnesses who claimed to have watched Ella's dead body being dumped at Sayaw Beach, Barili, said that she the female pillion passenger on a motorcycle driven by her co-witness and they say they rode past Bella and Ian's Pajero which (they say) was parked above the incline leading to that beach. When she made her affidavit over one month later, she was shown pictures of foreigners and identified Ian's photo (or it was pointed to her). In that photo, taken some four years earlier, he is clearly wearing spectacles which he habiltually does. In Court, Defence counsel went to great pains to get her to describe Ian whom she said was less than one metre away when they rode past. She described his shoes and said they were "Top Sider" make and she described him as a large man with thick legs and arms. Counsel then asked - at least twice during the two days of her testimony - to describe his facial features but she was unable to do so. Asked if he was wearing specatacles, she didn't know. For a start, "Top Sider" is a brand of women's shoes (they don't make mens' shoes) and Ian has a largish body but neither his arms nor his legs are in proportion and was described by his counsel as having a "frog-like" body. As a European, he would have been out of place and against the norm in her eyes so if he were there and if she saw him, she would have been able to provide a much more accurate description. Added to the fact that witness failed to mention his spectacles, her claimed obvservation goes against normal human behaviour. Defence counsel have drawn this to the Court's attention in their Memorandum.
Thanks. But, on a point of information, Topsiders are a brand of sailing deck shoe; they are unisex: http://www.sperrytopsider.com/store/SiteController/sperryUK/international
Sperry. One of my former employers. Elmer Sperry, the inventor of the gyroscope compass. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmer_Ambrose_Sperry
