Affective Space: Social Influences in Perception

与社会判断不同的是，感性判断根植于具体的现实，并且被认为是独立于社会背景的。然而，最近的调查表明，即使是对物理空间的感知也会受到社会和情感环境的影响。本研究旨在探讨认知中的社会和情感因素。与传统理论相反，生态学方法认为感知可能取决于之前未考虑的环境因素。例如，一些研究表明，一个人背着沉重的背包，山似乎更陡峭（Bhalla & Proffitt, 1999）。环境因素影响感知，因为它们与行动相关：对于一个有障碍的人来说，一座山更难爬，因此，看起来更陡峭。与物理属性（如沉重背包的重量）相比，我们对更多的“心理”属性（如互动环境的社交和情感性质）知之甚少。众所周知，社会和情感因素，如身处群体或心情良好，会影响生活满意度等社会判断。提出的研究将探讨感性判断是否同样受到“情境力量”的影响。拟议研究的目标是确定感知在多大程度上受到社会和情感因素的影响。有几项研究将检验若干不同因素对估计物体距离和山丘倾斜度的影响，例如是否有另一个人在场，或者判断物体具有何种情感价值。在此基础上，提出的研究的另一个结果是知觉测量的发展，它揭示了人们对各种刺激的情感反应。也就是说，如果人们的感觉影响他们对态度对象的距离的感知，那么人们也应该可以从他们感知到的距离来推断他们的态度。通过检验这些假设，我们期望对社会因素如何影响先前被认为与这些影响绝缘的基本过程有一个粗略的了解。该项目的更广泛影响包括对参与研究的人员的教育经验，例如对从事该项目的本科生和研究生，以及研究参与者，他们将在参与后收到有关研究的详细信息，作为其汇报的一部分。这项研究促进了跨学科和国际合作。该项目的调查结果预期将由公共媒体广泛传播，因为参与该项目的调查人员以前的研究已引起大众新闻界的相当大的注意。涉及参与者性别、种族和民族背景的研究结果将有助于调查空间行为的文化差异与空间感知差异的关联程度。

Unlike social judgments, perceptual judgments are anchored in concrete reality and are thought to be independent of social context. However, recent investigations suggest that even perceptions of physical space can be influenced by the social and emotional context. The proposed research explores such social and affective factors in perception. In contrast to traditional theories, ecological approaches suggest that perception may depend on contextual factors not previously considered. For example, some research shows that hills seem steeper to a person wearing a heavy backpack (Bhalla & Proffitt, 1999). Contextual factors influence perception because they are relevant to actions: A hill is harder to climb for an encumbered person, and thus, appears as steeper. In contrast to physical properties, such as the weight of a heavy backpack, not much is known about properties that are more "psychological," such as the social and affective nature of an interactive environment. Social and affective factors, such as being in a group or being in a good mood, are known to influence social judgments such as ratings of life satisfaction. The proposed research will explore whether perceptual judgments are similarly influenced by "the power of the situation." The goal of the proposed research is to determine to what extent perception is shaped by social and affective factors. Several studies will examine the influence of a number of different factors on estimates of distances to objects and slants of hills, such as whether another person is present, or what affective values judgment objects have. Building on this beginning, an additional outcome of the proposed research is the development of perceptual measures that reveal people's affective responses to various stimuli. That is, if people's feelings influence how they perceive distances to attitude objects, then it should also be the case that one can infer their attitudes from their perceived distances. By examining these hypotheses, we expect to get a glimpse of how social factors affect basic processes previously assumed to be insulated from such influences. The Broader Impact of the project includes educational experiences for the persons involved in the research, such as for the undergraduate and graduate students working on the project, as well as for research participants who will receive detailed information about the research as part of their debriefing after participation. This research promotes interdisciplinary as well as international collaboration. Findings from the project are expect to be broadly disseminated by the public media, because previous research by the investigators involved in the project has attracted considerable attention in the popular press. Findings involving participants' gender, racial and ethnic background will be informative in investigating the extent to which cultural differences in spatial behavior are associated with differences in spatial perception.