The Affective Vision Hypothesis

Northeastern University, Boston MA

Investigators

Abstract

It seems obvious that what you see influences what you feel. Seeing a smiling face can make you happy. Seeing a scowling face can make you distressed. But what if the opposite were also true? What if what you feel influences what you see literally, and it is easier to see a smiling face when you are happy, or to see a scowling face when you are distressed? This is known as the affective vision effect. In the initial experiments, the current researchers demonstrated that a person's feelings do influence what he or she is conscious of seeing. In the research proposed here, they will examine the mechanisms by which feelings influence vision. By focusing on the mechanisms of the affective vision effect, this research will provide evidence that contradicts the everyday impression that people dispassionately behold the world around them. Depending on how a person feels, he or she will literally see the world differently (it is not just a matter of interpretation). And, if one person routinely feels happy and sees brief smiles in the face of a friend or co-worker, whereas another person routinely feels distressed and sees brief frowns and grimaces, then those two people live in experientially different worlds, even if the actual physical world is the same. Findings from this work will make it possible to determine whether certain types of life experiences (e.g., prolonged drug use, living in urban poverty, or in environments with a high base rate of threat or chronic stress) wire people to see the world differently. In addition to this type of impact, this research will have significant educational impacts by providing science education for undergraduate students, graduate students, and patrons of the Boston Museum of Science.