Sensational
Incandescent Affect: Turning On The Hot Emotional System With Bright Light
Alison Jing Xu & Aparna Labroo
Journal of Consumer Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
We propose turning on the light can turn on the hot emotional system. Across six studies we show that ambient brightness makes people feel warmer, which increases intensity of affective response, including sensation seeking from spicy-hot foods, perception of aggression and sexiness (“hotness”) in others, and generating more extreme affective reactions toward positive and negative words and drinks. We suggest these effects arise because light underlies perception of heat, and perception of heat can trigger the hot emotional system. Thus, turning down the light, effortless and unassuming as it may seem, can reduce emotionality in everyday decisions, most of which take place under bright light.
----------------------
Seeing the Unseen: Autism Involves Reduced Susceptibility to Inattentional Blindness
John Swettenham et al.
Neuropsychology, forthcoming
Objective: Attention research in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has produced conflicting results. Some findings demonstrate greater distractibility while others suggest superior focused attention. Applying Lavie’s load theory of attention to account for this discrepancy led us to hypothesize increased perceptual capacity in ASD. Preliminary support for our hypothesis has so far been found for adults with ASD with reaction time (RT) and signal detection sensitivity measures. Here we test the novel prediction we derived from this hypothesis that children with ASD should have lower rates of inattentional blindness than controls.
Method: Twenty-four children with ASD (mean age = 10 years 10 months) and 39 typically developing children (age and IQ matched) took part in the study. We assessed the effects of perceptual load on the rates of inattentional blindness in each group. Participants performing a line discrimination task in either a high load or low load condition were presented with an unexpected extra stimulus on a critical trial. Performance on the line judgment task and rates of detection and stimulus identification were recorded.
Results: Overall rates of detection and identification were higher in the ASD group than in the controls. Moreover, whereas both detection and identification rates were significantly lower in the high (compared with low) load conditions for the controls, these were unaffected by load in the ASD group.
Conclusion: Reduced inattentional blindness rates under load in ASD suggests higher perceptual capacity is a core feature, present from childhood and leading to superior performance in various measures of perception and attention.
----------------------
Post-study caffeine administration enhances memory consolidation in humans
Daniel Borota et al.
Nature Neuroscience, forthcoming
Abstract:
It is currently not known whether caffeine has an enhancing effect on long-term memory in humans. We used post-study caffeine administration to test its effect on memory consolidation using a behavioral discrimination task. Caffeine enhanced performance 24 h after administration according to an inverted U-shaped dose-response curve; this effect was specific to consolidation and not retrieval. We conclude that caffeine enhanced consolidation of long-term memories in humans.
----------------------
Trust in Me: Trustworthy Others Are Seen as More Physically Similar to the Self
Harry Farmer, Ryan McKay & Manos Tsakiris
Psychological Science, January 2014, Pages 290-292
"In the present study, we examined how participants’ perception of facial similarity was affected by taking part in a social interaction (trust game) in which the trustee either rewarded or betrayed the participant’s trust...The faces of trustworthy interaction partners are perceived as more similar to one’s own than those of untrustworthy interaction partners are."
----------------------
Self-Affirmation Counters the Effects of Self-Regulatory Resource Depletion on Height Perception
Stefan Huynh, Jeanine Stefanucci & Lisa Aspinwall
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Perception of the layout of the environment may be influenced by factors other than the physical information provided to the retina, including self-regulatory and psychosocial resources. We tested whether depletion of self-regulatory resources affected estimates of the height of a balcony and whether a psychosocial resource could substitute for self-regulatory resources among individuals making such estimates. Undergraduates performed a self-regulation depletion task and a values-affirmation task or their control equivalents in a 2 × 2 design (N = 80) and viewed a balcony height from above. A rope was attached to the height to make action on the height possible. Those who expended self-regulatory resources overestimated the balcony height more than the control group (both groups overestimated relative to the true height). However, this effect was counteracted by the values-affirmation task. Depleted participants who affirmed core values did not overestimate the height as much, resulting in estimates similar to the non-depleted participants. These results were not mediated by perceived threat posed by the height, positive mood or more specific positive, other-directed feelings. Our results suggest that visual perception of a threatening environment can be affected by the resources available to the perceiver for performing action on the environment.
----------------------
A processing fluency-account of funniness: Running gags and spoiling punchlines
Sascha Topolinski
Cognition & Emotion, forthcoming
Abstract:
Earlier theories on humour assume that funniness stems from the incongruity resolution of the surprising punchline and thus an insight into the joke's meaning. Applying recent psychological theorising that insight itself draws on processing fluency being the ease and speed with which mental content is processed, it is predicted that increasing the fluency of processing the punchline of a joke increases funniness. In Experiments 1 and 2, significant nouns from the punchlines or from the beginnings of jokes were presented before a joke was rated in funniness. Pre-exposing punchline words 15 minutes and even only 1 minute before the eventual joke led to increased funniness ratings. In contrast, pre-exposing punchline words directly before a joke led to decreased funniness ratings. Furthermore, pre-exposing the beginning of a joke 1 minute before the joke had no effects on funniness. Experiment 3 ruled out exposure-facilitated punchline anticipation as alternative mechanism, and Experiment 4 replicated this fluency effect with typing font as manipulation. These findings also show that pre-exposing a punchline, which in common knowledge should spoil a joke, can actually increase funniness under certain conditions.
----------------------
Illusory self-identification with an avatar reduces arousal responses to painful stimuli
Daniele Romano et al.
Behavioural Brain Research, 15 March 2014, Pages 275–281
Abstract:
Looking at one's own body has been shown to induce analgesia. In the present work we investigated whether illusory self-identification with an avatar, as induced experimentally through visuo-tactile stimulation, modulates the response to painful stimuli. In 30 healthy volunteers, a robotic device was used to stroke the participants back, while they viewed either the body of an avatar, a non-body object (control object), or a body avatar with scrambled body parts (control body). All were visually stimulated in either congruent or incongruent fashion with the participant's body. We collected physiological responses (Skin Conductance Response - SCR) to painful stimuli delivered to the participant's hand and responses to a questionnaire inquiring about self-identification with the avatar. We expected reduced physiological responses to pain during the observation of a body avatar only during synchronous visuo-tactile stroking and no reduction for the control object and the control body. Results showed a reduced SCR to painful stimuli when participants observed the normal body avatar being stroked synchronously that was also associated with largest self-identification ratings recordable already during the pain anticipation. Moreover, a negative correlation between self-identification and SCR was observed, suggesting that a greater degree of self-identification with the avatar was associated with larger decreases in SCR. These results suggest that, during states of illusory self-identification with the avatar, the vision of an alien body (anatomically compatible for the vision and congruently stroked for the touch) is effective in modulating physiological responses to painful stimuli.
----------------------
K.C.H.J. Smolders & Y.A.W. de Kort
Journal of Environmental Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Alertness-enhancing effects of bright light are particularly strong at night or after sleep deprivation. Alerting effects during daytime also exist, yet these appear to be more modest. In this study, we investigate whether a higher illuminance level particularly benefits individuals who suffer from mental fatigue – not from sleep pressure, but from mental exertion. A 2x2 within-subjects design (N = 28; 106 sessions) was applied to investigate effects of 1000 vs. 200 lx at the eye on self-report measures, task performance and physiological arousal after a mental antecedent condition (fatigue vs. control). Results showed that participants felt less sleepy, more vital and happier when exposed to bright light. Effects on subjective sleepiness and self-control capacity were stronger under mental fatigue. Vigilance benefited from bright light exposure – although this effect emerged with a delay irrespective of the antecedent condition. Other tasks showed more mixed and sometimes even adverse effects of bright light.
----------------------
Taking a Shine to It: How the Preference for Glossy Stems from an Innate Need for Water
Katrien Meert, Mario Pandelaere & Vanessa Patrick
Journal of Consumer Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Human beings are attracted to glossy objects. However, the investigation of whether this preference for glossy is a systematic bias, and the rationale for why, has received little or no attention. Drawing on an evolutionary psychology framework, we propose and test the hypothesis that the preference for glossy stems from an innate preference for water as a valuable resource. In a set of six studies we demonstrate the preference for glossy amongst both adults and young children (studies 1A, 1B and 2) ruling out a socialization explanation, investigate the hypothesis that the preference for glossy stems from an innate need for water as a resource (studies 3 and 5) and, in addition, rule out the more superficial account of glossy = pretty (study 4). The interplay between the different perspectives, implications of the findings and future research directions are discussed.
----------------------
Happiness takes you right: The effect of emotional stimuli on line bisection
Zaira Cattaneo et al.
Cognition & Emotion, Winter 2014, Pages 325-344
Abstract:
Emotion recognition is mediated by a complex network of cortical and subcortical areas, with the two hemispheres likely being differently involved in processing positive and negative emotions. As results on valence-dependent hemispheric specialisation are quite inconsistent, we carried out three experiments with emotional stimuli with a task being sensitive to measure specific hemispheric processing. Participants were required to bisect visual lines that were delimited by emotional face flankers, or to haptically bisect rods while concurrently listening to emotional vocal expressions. We found that prolonged (but not transient) exposition to concurrent happy stimuli significantly shifted the bisection bias to the right compared to both sad and neutral stimuli, indexing a greater involvement of the left hemisphere in processing of positively connoted stimuli. No differences between sad and neutral stimuli were observed across the experiments. In sum, our data provide consistent evidence in favour of a greater involvement of the left hemisphere in processing positive emotions and suggest that (prolonged) exposure to stimuli expressing happiness significantly affects allocation of (spatial) attentional resources, regardless of the sensory (visual/auditory) modality in which the emotion is perceived and space is explored (visual/haptic).