Seeing What You Feel: Affect Drives Visual Perception of Structurally Neutral Faces
Abstract
Affective realism, the phenomenon whereby affect is integrated into an individual’s experience of the world, is a normal consequence of how the brain processes sensory information from the external world in the context of sensations from the body. In the present investigation, we provided compelling empirical evidence that affective realism involves changes in visual perception (i.e., affect changes how participants see neutral stimuli). In two studies, we used an interocular suppression technique, continuous flash suppression, to present affective images outside of participants’ conscious awareness. We demonstrated that seen neutral faces are perceived as more smiling when paired with unseen affectively positive stimuli. Study 2 also demonstrated that seen neutral faces are perceived as more scowling when paired with unseen affectively negative stimuli. These findings have implications for real-world situations and challenge beliefs that affect is a distinct psychological phenomenon that can be separated from cognition and perception.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Feb 27, 2018
- Source ID
- 10.1177/0956797617741718
Entities
People
- Erika H. Siegel
- Jolie B. Wormwood
- Karen S Quigley
- Lisa Feldman Barrett
Organizations
- Bedford Veterans Affairs Medical Center
- Harvard Medical School
- Massachusetts General Hospital
- National Institute of Mental Health
- Northeastern University
- U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences
- University of California, San Francisco