Felt something
The Effects of Heightened Physiological Needs on Perception of Psychological Connectedness
Xiuping Li & Meng Zhang
Journal of Consumer Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
In three sets of experiments, we propose and find a cognition shift caused by heightened physiological states such as sexual desire and hunger. In particular, it was found that exposure to images of sexy women decreases male consumers' perception of being connected to others. A similar effect was demonstrated in a study when participants were feeling hungry. Such an effect of physiological need on social perception is profound, irrespective of whether the target "other" is an acquaintance, a best friend, an unknown person, or even the future self. We also test the downstream behavioral consequences of this reduced psychological connectedness (e.g., less resource allocation and less helping).
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When do socially accepted people feel ostracized? Physical pain triggers social pain
Zhansheng Chen, Kai-Tak Poon & Nathan DeWall
Social Influence, forthcoming
Abstract:
The present research investigated whether physical suffering would cause people to feel ostracized even when they are accepted by their social interaction partners. Participants were instructed to place their hands either into a circulated cold water bath (to induce physical pain) or into a water bath at room temperature while they were either included or ostracized during an online ball tossing game — Cyberball. We found that physical pain led people to experience social pain, while they are socially accepted during a social interaction. Our findings suggest that people with physical suffering may need extra attention in social interactions to satisfy their threatened social needs.
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In doubt and disorderly: Ambivalence promotes compensatory perceptions of order
Frenk van Harreveld et al.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, August 2014, Pages 1666-1676
Abstract:
Ambivalence is a presumably unpleasant experience, and coming to terms with it is an intricate part of human existence. It is argued that ambivalent attitude holders cope with their ambivalence through compensatory perceptions of order. We first show that ambivalence leads to an increase in (visual) perceptions of order (Study 1). In Study 2 we conceptually replicate this finding by showing that ambivalence also increases belief in conspiracy theories, a cognitive form of order perception. Furthermore, this effect is mediated by the negative emotions that are elicited by ambivalence. In Study 3 we show that increased need for order is driving these effects: Affirmations of order cancel out the effect of ambivalence on perceptions of order. Theoretical as well as societal implications are discussed.
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Ray of Hope: Hopelessness Increases Preferences for Brighter Lighting
Ping Dong, Xun (Irene) Huang & Chen-Bo Zhong
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Does bright lighting seem more desirable when people feel hopeless? Common parlance such as “ray of hope” depicts an association between hope and the perception of brightness. Building on research in embodied cognition and conceptual metaphor, we examined whether incidental emotion of hopelessness can affect brightness perception, which may influence people’s preference for lighting. Across four studies, we found that people who feel hopeless judge the environment to be darker (Study 1). As a consequence, hopeless people expressed a greater desire for ambient brightness and higher wattage light bulbs (Studies 2 and 3). Study 4 showed the reversal of the effect — being in a dimmer (vs. brighter) room induces greater hopelessness toward the perceived job search prospects. Taken together, these results suggest that hopeless feeling seems to bias people’s perceptual judgment of ambient brightness, which may potentially impact their electricity consumption.
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Veronika Ilyuk, Lauren Block & David Faro
Journal of Consumer Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Misuse of pharmacological products is a major public health concern. Seven studies provide evidence of a rapid wear-off bias in judgments of pharmacological products: consumers infer that duration of product efficacy is dependent on concurrent task difficulty, such that relatively more difficult tasks lead to faster product wear-off. This bias appears to be grounded in consumers’ incorrect application of a mental model about substance wear-off based on their experiences with, and beliefs about, various physical and biological phenomena. Results indicate that the rapid wear-off bias affects consumption frequency and may thus contribute to overdosing of widely available pharmacological products. Further, manufacturers’ intake instructions in an interval format (e.g., “Take one pill every 2-4 hours”) are shown to signal that efficacy is task-dependent and reinforce the bias. Debiasing mechanisms — interventions to reduce the rapid wear-off bias and its impact — along with implications for consumers, marketers, and public health officials are discussed.
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Chemical communication of fear: A case of male–female asymmetry
Jasper de Groot, Gün Semin & Monique Smeets
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, August 2014, Pages 1515-1525
Abstract:
Previous research has documented sex differences in nonverbal communication. What has remained unknown is whether similar sex differences would exist with regard to olfactory communication via chemosignals, a relatively neglected nonverbal communication medium. Because women generally have a better sense of smell and greater sensitivity to emotional signals, we hypothesized that compared with male participants and relative to a neutral control condition, female participants would emulate the fearful state of the sender producing the chemosignals. Facial electromyography was used in a double-blind experiment to measure in the receiver a partial reproduction of the state of the sender, controlling for the moderating influence of the sex of the sender and receiver. The results indicated that only female participants emulated the fearful state of the sender. The present study revealed a boundary condition for effective chemosignaling by reporting behavioral evidence of sexual asymmetry in olfactory communication via chemosignals.
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Seeing the Big Picture: The Effect of Height on the Level of Construal
Pankaj Aggarwal & Min Zhao
Journal of Marketing Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Drawing on research on grounded cognition and metaphorical representation, the authors propose and confirm in five studies that physical height or even the mere concept of height can impact the perceptual and conceptual levels of mental construal. As such, consumers perceiving themselves to be physically “high” or elevated are more likely to adopt a global perceptual processing and higher level of conceptual construal, while those perceiving themselves to be physically “low” are more likely to adopt a local perceptual processing and lower level of conceptual construal. This difference in level of construal also impacts product choices involving trade-offs between long-term benefit and short-term effort. Alternative accounts such as vertical distance, visual distance, and perceived power are addressed. By highlighting the novel relationship between height and construal level, these findings contribute to research on grounded cognition and construal-level theory, while also providing practical suggestions to marketing managers across a variety of domains.
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Gaze direction affects visuo-spatial short-term memory
Christophe Carlei & Dirk Kerzel
Brain and Cognition, October 2014, Pages 63–68
Abstract:
Hemispheric asymmetries were investigated by changing the horizontal position of stimuli that had to be remembered in a visuo-spatial short-term memory task. Observers looked at matrices containing a variable number of filled squares on the left or right side of the screen center. At stimulus offset, participants reproduced the positions of the filled squares in an empty response matrix. Stimulus and response matrices were presented in the same quadrant. We observed that memory performance was better when the matrices were shown on the left side of the screen. We distinguished between recall strategies that relied on visual or non-visual (verbal) cues and found that the effect of gaze position occurred more reliably in participants using visual recall strategies. Overall, the results show that there is a solid enhancement of visuo-spatial short-term memory when observers look to the left. In contrast, vertical position had no influence on performance. We suggest that unilateral gaze to the left activates centers in the right hemisphere contributing to visuo-spatial memory.
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Disinhibition of olfaction: Human olfactory performance improves following low levels of alcohol
Yaara Endevelt-Shapira et al.
Behavioural Brain Research, 1 October 2014, Pages 66–74
Abstract:
We hypothesize that true human olfactory abilities are obscured by cortical inhibition. Alcohol reduces inhibition. We therefore tested the hypothesis that olfactory abilities will improve following alcohol consumption. We measured olfaction in 85 subjects, 45 in a between-subjects design, and 40 in a repeated-measures within-subjects design before and after consumption of alcoholic or non-alcoholic beverages. Subjects were also assessed using neurocognitive measures of inhibition. Following alcohol consumption, blood alcohol levels ranged from 0.005% to 0.11%. Across subjects, before any consumption of alcohol, we found that individuals who were less inhibited had lower (better) olfactory detection thresholds (r = 0.68, p < 0.005). Moreover, after alcohol consumption, subjects with low alcohol levels could make olfactory discriminations that subjects with 0% alcohol could not make (chance = 33%, alcohol = 51.3 ± 22.7%, control = 34.7 ± 31.6%, t(43) = 2.03, p < 0.05). Within subjects, we found correlations between levels of alcohol and olfactory detection (r = 0.63, p < 0.005) and discrimination (r = −0.50, p < 0.05), such that performance was improved at low levels of alcohol (significantly better than baseline for detection) and deteriorated at higher levels of alcohol. Finally, levels of alcohol-induced improved olfactory discrimination were correlated with levels of alcohol-induced cognitive disinhibition (r = 0.48, p < 0.05). Although we cannot rule out alternative non-inhibitory alcohol-induced routes of influence, we conclude that improved olfaction at low levels of alcohol supports the notion of an inhibitory mechanism obscuring true olfactory abilities.
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Interoceptive ability predicts aversion to losses
Peter Sokol-Hessner et al.
Cognition and Emotion, forthcoming
Abstract:
Emotions have been proposed to inform risky decision-making through the influence of affective physiological responses on subjective value. The ability to perceive internal body states, or “interoception” may influence this relationship. Here, we examined whether interoception predicts participants' degree of loss aversion, which has been previously linked to choice-related arousal responses. Participants performed both a heartbeat-detection task indexing interoception and a risky monetary decision-making task, from which loss aversion, risk attitudes and choice consistency were parametrically measured. Interoceptive ability correlated selectively with loss aversion and was unrelated to the other value parameters. This finding suggests that specific and separable component processes underlying valuation are shaped not only by our physiological responses, as shown in previous findings, but also by our interoceptive access to such signals.
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Experimental evolution of prepared learning
Aimee Dunlap & David Stephens
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, forthcoming
Abstract:
Animals learn some things more easily than others. To explain this so-called prepared learning, investigators commonly appeal to the evolutionary history of stimulus–consequence relationships experienced by a population or species. We offer a simple model that formalizes this long-standing hypothesis. The key variable in our model is the statistical reliability of the association between stimulus, action, and consequence. We use experimental evolution to test this hypothesis in populations of Drosophila. We systematically manipulated the reliability of two types of experience (the pairing of the aversive chemical quinine with color or with odor). Following 40 generations of evolution, data from learning assays support our basic prediction: Changes in learning abilities track the reliability of associations during a population’s selective history. In populations where, for example, quinine–color pairings were unreliable but quinine–odor pairings were reliable, we find increased sensitivity to learning the quinine–odor experience and reduced sensitivity to learning quinine–color. To the best of our knowledge this is the first experimental demonstration of the evolution of prepared learning.
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Eye contact elicits bodily self-awareness in human adults
Matias Baltazar et al.
Cognition, October 2014, Pages 120–127
Abstract:
Eye contact is a typical human behaviour known to impact concurrent or subsequent cognitive processing. In particular, it has been suggested that eye contact induces self-awareness, though this has never been formally proven. Here, we show that the perception of a face with a direct gaze (that establishes eye contact), as compared to either a face with averted gaze or a mere fixation cross, led adult participants to rate more accurately the intensity of their physiological reactions induced by emotional pictures. Our data support the view that bodily self-awareness becomes more acute when one is subjected to another’s gaze. Importantly, this effect was not related to a particular arousal state induced by eye contact perception. Rejecting the arousal hypothesis, we suggest that eye contact elicits a self-awareness process by enhancing self-focused attention in humans. We further discuss the implications of this proposal.
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Speeding in School Zones: Violation or Lapse in Prospective Memory?
Bree Gregory et al.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, forthcoming
Abstract:
Inappropriate speed is a causal factor in around one third of fatal accidents (OECD/ECMT, 2006). But are drivers always consciously responsible for their speeding behavior? Two studies are reported which show that an interruption to a journey, caused by stopping at a red traffic light, can result in failure to resume the speed of travel prior to the interruption (Study 1). In Study 2 we showed that the addition of a reminder cue could offset this interruption. These studies were conducted in a number of Australian school zone sites subject to a 40 km/h speed limit, requiring a reduction of between 20 km/h and 40 km/h. Motorists who had stopped at a red traffic signal sped on average, 8.27 km/h over the speed limit compared with only 1.76 km/h over the limit for those who had not been required to stop. In the second study a flashing “check speed” reminder cue, placed 70 m after the traffic lights, in the same school zones as those in Study 1 eliminated the interruptive effect of stopping with drivers resuming their journey at the legal speed. These findings have practical implications for the design of road environments, enforcement of speed limits, and the safety of pedestrians.
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Noham Wolpe, Daniel Wolpert & James Rowe
Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, June 2014
Abstract:
People perceive the consequences of their own actions differently to how they perceive other sensory events. A large body of psychology research has shown that people also consistently overrate their own performance relative to others, yet little is known about how these “illusions of superiority” are normally maintained. Here we examined the visual perception of the sensory consequences of self-generated and observed goal-directed actions. Across a series of visuomotor tasks, we found that the perception of the sensory consequences of one's own actions is more biased toward success relative to the perception of observed actions. Using Bayesian models, we show that this bias could be explained by priors that represent exaggerated predictions of success. The degree of exaggeration of priors was unaffected by learning, but was correlated with individual differences in trait optimism. In contrast, when observing these actions, priors represented more accurate predictions of the actual performance. The results suggest that the brain internally represents optimistic predictions for one's own actions. Such exaggerated predictions bind the sensory consequences of our own actions with our intended goal, explaining how it is that when acting we tend to see what we want to see.