Would a Traveler Sometimes Benefit from Arriving with Fewer Assumptions?
Expectations can function as blindfolds as well as guides.
Sometimes. Strong expectations can reduce a traveler's ability to notice unexpected realities.
A traveler arrives expecting a city to be expensive, crowded, and rushed. Throughout the trip, they unconsciously focus on evidence that supports those beliefs.
The hidden mechanism is expectation filtering. People naturally notice information that confirms existing assumptions.
Travel often becomes most educational when observations are allowed to compete with expectations.
The first thing a traveler brings into a country is not luggage. It is a theory about what they expect to find.
