Subliminal
Jasper de Groot et al.
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
It is well known that feelings of happiness transfer between individuals through mimicry induced by vision and hearing. The evidence is inconclusive, however, as to whether happiness can be communicated through the sense of smell via chemosignals. As chemosignals are a known medium for transferring negative emotions from a sender to a receiver, we examined whether chemosignals are also involved in the transmission of positive emotions. Positive emotions are important for overall well-being and yet relatively neglected in research on chemosignaling, arguably because of the stronger survival benefits linked with negative emotions. We observed that exposure to body odor collected from senders of chemosignals in a happy state induced a facial expression and perceptual-processing style indicative of happiness in the receivers of those signals. Our findings suggest that not only negative affect but also a positive state (happiness) can be transferred by means of odors.
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Claudia Muth, Vera Hesslinger & Claus-Christian Carbon
Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, forthcoming
Abstract:
We asked whether and how people appreciate ambiguous artworks and examined the possible mechanisms underlying the appeal of perceptual challenge in art. Although experimental research has shown people's particular appreciation for highly familiar and prototypical objects that are fluently processed, there is increasing evidence that in the arts people often prefer ambiguous materials which are processed less fluently. Here, we empirically show that modern and contemporary ambiguous artworks evoking perceptual challenge are indeed appreciated. By applying a multilevel modeling approach together with multidimensional measurement of aesthetic appreciation, we revealed that the higher the subjectively perceived degree of ambiguity within an artwork, the more participants liked it and the more interesting and affecting it was for them. These dimensions of aesthetic appreciation were also positively related to the subjectively reported strength of insights during elaboration of the artworks. The estimated solvability of the experienced ambiguity, in contrast, was not relevant for liking and even negatively linked to interest and affect. Consequently, we propose a critical view of the frequently reported idea that processing (modern) art simply equals a kind of problem-solving task. We suggest the dynamic gain of insights during the elaboration of an ambiguous artwork, rather than the state of having solved a problem, to be a mechanism possibly relevant to the appeal of challenge in the perception of ambiguous art.
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The Cognitive Consequences of Formal Clothing
Michael Slepian et al.
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Drawing from literature on construal-level theory and the psychological consequences of clothing, the current work tested whether wearing formal clothing enhances abstract cognitive processing. Five studies provided evidence supporting this hypothesis. Wearing more formal clothing was associated with higher action identification level (Study 1) and greater category inclusiveness (Study 2). Putting on formal clothing induced greater category inclusiveness (Study 3) and enhanced a global processing advantage (Study 4). The association between clothing formality and abstract processing was mediated by felt power (Study 5). The findings demonstrate that the nature of an everyday and ecologically valid experience, the clothing worn, influences cognition broadly, impacting the processing style that changes how objects, people, and events are construed.
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Jack Goncalo, Lynne Vincent & Verena Krause
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, July 2015, Pages 32-39
Abstract:
A newly emerging stream of research suggests creativity can be fruitfully explored, not as an outcome variable, but as a contributor to the general cognitive and behavioral responding of the individual. In this paper, we extend this nascent area of research on the consequences of creativity by showing that working on a creative task can contribute to feelings of liberation - feelings that can help people to overcome psychological burdens. We illustrate the liberating effects of creativity by integrating the embodied cognition literature with recent research showing that keeping a secret is experienced as a psychological and physical burden. While secrecy is metaphorically related to physical burden, creativity is metaphorically associated with freedom to "think outside the box" and explore beyond normal constraints. Thus, we predict permission to be creative may actually feel liberating and feelings of liberation may, in turn, lift the physical burden of keeping a big secret. The results of three studies supported our prediction and suggest that the opportunity to be creative may be a way for people to unburden without directly revealing secrets that could cause shame and embarrassment. We discuss the implications of our results for future research on the psychological consequences of performing creative work.
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Is the left hemisphere androcentric? Evidence of the learned categorical perception of gender
Sapphira Thorne, Peter Hegarty & Caroline Catmur
Laterality: Asymmetries of Body, Brain and Cognition, forthcoming
Abstract:
Effects of language learning on categorical perception have been detected in multiple domains. We extended the methods of these studies to gender and pitted the predictions of androcentrism theory and the spatial agency bias against each other. Androcentrism is the tendency to take men as the default gender and is socialized through language learning. The spatial agency bias is a tendency to imagine men before women in the left-right axis in the direction of one's written language. We examined how gender-ambiguous faces were categorized as female or male when presented in the left visual fields (LVFs) and right visual fields (RVFs) to 42 native speakers of English. When stimuli were presented in the RVF rather than the LVF, participants (1) applied a lower threshold to categorize stimuli as male and (2) categorized clearly male faces as male more quickly. Both findings support androcentrism theory suggesting that the left hemisphere, which is specialized for language, processes face stimuli as male-by-default more readily than the right hemisphere. Neither finding evidences an effect of writing direction predicted by the spatial agency bias on the categorization of gender-ambiguous faces.
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Geoffrey Durso, Andrew Luttrell & Baldwin Way
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Acetaminophen, an effective and popular over-the-counter pain reliever (e.g., the active ingredient in Tylenol), has recently been shown to blunt individuals' reactivity to a range of negative stimuli in addition to physical pain. Because accumulating research has shown that individuals' reactivity to both negative and positive stimuli can be influenced by a single factor (an idea known as differential susceptibility), we conducted two experiments testing whether acetaminophen blunted individuals' evaluations of and emotional reactions to both negative and positive images from the International Affective Picture System. Participants who took acetaminophen evaluated unpleasant stimuli less negatively and pleasant stimuli less positively, compared with participants who took a placebo. Participants in the acetaminophen condition also rated both negative and positive stimuli as less emotionally arousing than did participants in the placebo condition (Studies 1 and 2), whereas nonevaluative ratings (extent of color saturation in each image; Study 2) were not affected by drug condition. These findings suggest that acetaminophen has a general blunting effect on individuals' evaluative and emotional processing, irrespective of negative or positive valence.
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David Lee, Eunjung Kim & Norbert Schwarz
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, July 2015, Pages 47-50
Abstract:
Feelings of suspicion alert people not to take information at face value. In many languages, suspicion is metaphorically associated with smell; in English, this smell is "fishy". We tested whether incidental exposure to fishy smells influences information processing. In Study 1, participants exposed to incidental fishy smells (vs. no odor) while answering questions were more likely to detect a semantic distortion (the "Moses illusion"), but not more likely to falsely identify an undistorted question as misleading. In Study 2, participants exposed to fishy smells (vs. no odor) were more likely to engage in negative hypothesis testing (falsifying their own initial hunch), resulting in better performance on the Wason rule discovery task. These findings show that incidental olfactory suspicion cues can affect performance on social as well as nonsocial reasoning tasks.
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The 'warm' side of coldness: Cold promotes interpersonal warmth in negative contexts
Wenqi Wei, Jingjing Ma & Lei Wang
British Journal of Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
The concrete experience of physical warmth has been demonstrated to promote interpersonal warmth. This well-documented link, however, tells only half of the story. In the current study, we thus examined whether physical coldness can also increase interpersonal warmth under certain circumstances. We conducted three experiments to demonstrate that the relationship between the experience of physical temperature and interpersonal outcomes is context dependent. Experiment 1 showed that participants touching cold (vs. warm) objects were more willing to forgive a peer's dishonest behaviour. Experiment 2 demonstrated the fully interactive effect of temperature and context on interpersonal warmth: Participants touching cold (vs. warm) objects were less likely to assist an individual who had provided them with good service (positive social context), but more likely to assist an individual who had provided them with poor service (negative social context). Experiment 3 replicated the results of Experiment 2 using the likelihood to complain, a hostility-related indicator, as the dependent variable: In a pleasant queue (positive social context), participants touching cold objects were more likely to complain and those touching warm objects were less likely to complain compared with the control group. This pattern was reversed in an annoying queue (negative social context).
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Do observers like curvature or do they dislike angularity?
Marco Bertamini et al.
British Journal of Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Humans have a preference for curved over angular shapes, an effect noted by artists as well as scientists. It may be that people like smooth curves or that people dislike angles, or both. We investigated this phenomenon in four experiments. Using abstract shapes differing in type of contour (angular vs. curved) and complexity, Experiment 1 confirmed a preference for curvature not linked to perceived complexity. Experiment 2 tested whether the effect was modulated by distance. If angular shapes are associated with a threat, the effect may be stronger when they are presented within peripersonal space. This hypothesis was not supported. Experiment 3 tested whether preference for curves occurs when curved lines are compared to straight lines without angles. Sets of coloured lines (angular vs. curved vs. straight) were seen through a circular or square aperture. Curved lines were liked more than either angular or straight lines. Therefore, angles are not necessary to generate a preference for curved shapes. Finally, Experiment 4 used an implicit measure of preference, the manikin task, to measure approach/avoidance behaviour. Results did not confirm a pattern of avoidance for angularity but only a pattern of approach for curvature. Our experiments suggest that the threat association hypothesis cannot fully explain the curvature effect and that curved shapes are, per se, visually pleasant.
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Influence on Chopstick Size on Taste Evaluations
Hung-Ming Lin, Chien-Huang Lin & Hui-Hsi Hung
Psychological Reports, April 2015, Pages 381-387
Abstract:
This study explored the influence of the length of chopsticks on taste evaluations. Participants (N = 78; M age = 21.1 yr., SD = 3.8) reported a greater liking for their food and higher purchase intentions when using long rather than short chopsticks. Findings also indicated that the long (vs short) chopsticks caused people to slow down when eating, resulting in greater eating duration and a higher number of mouthfuls. The findings of this study provide insights on research into the role of tableware in food intake.
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Spiders at the cocktail party: An ancestral threat that surmounts inattentional blindness
Joshua New & Tamsin German
Evolution and Human Behavior, May 2015, Pages 165-173
Abstract:
The human visual system may retain ancestral mechanisms uniquely dedicated to the rapid detection of immediate and specific threats (e.g. spiders and snakes) that persistently recurred throughout evolutionary time. We hypothesized that one such ancestral hazard, spiders, should be inherently prioritized for visual attention and awareness irrespective of their visual or personal salience. This hypothesis was tested using the inattentional blindness paradigm in which an unexpected and peripheral stimulus is presented coincidentally with a central task-relevant display. Despite their highly marginalized presentation, iconic spiders were nonetheless detected, localized, and identified by a very large proportion of observers. Observers were considerably less likely to perceive 1) different configurations of the same visual features which diverged from a spider prototype, or "template", 2) a modern threatening stimulus (hypodermic needle) comparable in emotional salience, or 3) a different fear-irrelevant animal (housefly). Spiders may be one of a very few evolutionarily-persistent threats that are inherently specified for visual detection and uniquely "prepared" to capture attention and awareness irrespective of any foreknowledge, personal importance, or task-relevance.
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Joshua Haworth et al.
Frontiers in Psychology, March 2015
Abstract:
Recognition of biological motion is pervasive in early child development. Further, viewing the movement behavior of others is a primary component of a child's acquisition of complex, robust movement repertoires, through imitation and real-time coordinated action. We theorize that inherent to biological movements are particular qualities of mathematical chaos and complexity. We further posit that this character affords the rich and complex inter-dynamics throughout early motor development. Specifically, we explored whether children's preference for biological motion may be related to an affinity for mathematical chaos. Cross recurrence quantification analysis (cRQA) was used to investigate the coordination of gaze and posture with various temporal structures (periodic, chaotic, and aperiodic) of the motion of an oscillating visual stimulus. Children appear to competently perceive and respond to chaotic motion, both in rate (cRQA-percent determinism) and duration (cRQA-maxline) of coordination. We interpret this to indicate that children not only recognize chaotic motion structures, but also have a preference for coordination with them. Further, stratification of our sample (by age) uncovers the suggestion that this preference may become refined with age.
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Sick man walking: Perception of health status from body motion
Tina Sundelin et al.
Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, forthcoming
Abstract:
An ability to detect subtle signs of sickness in others would be highly beneficial, as it would allow for behaviors that help us avoid contagious pathogens. Recent findings suggest that both animals and humans are able to detect distinctive odor signals of individuals with activated innate immune responses. This study tested whether an innate immune response affects a person's walking speed and whether other people experience that person as less healthy. 43 subjects watched films of persons who were experiencing experimental immune activation, and rated the walking individuals in the films with respect to health, tiredness, and sadness. Furthermore, the walking speed in the films was analyzed. After LPS injections, participants walked more slowly and were perceived as less healthy and more tired as compared to when injected with placebo. There was also a trend for the subjects to look sadder after LPS injection than after placebo. Furthermore, there were strong associations between walking speed and the appearance of health, tiredness, and sadness. These findings support the notion that walking speed is affected by an activated immune response, and that humans may be able to detect very early signs of sickness in others by merely observing their gait. This ability is likely to aid both a "behavioral immune system", by providing more opportunities for adaptive behaviors such as avoidance, and the anticipatory priming of biochemical immune responses.