The Affective Vision Hypothesis

很明显，你所看到的会影响你的感受。看到一张笑脸会让你快乐。看到一张愁眉苦脸的脸会让你心疼。但如果相反的情况也是真的呢？如果你的感觉影响了你所看到的字面意思，当你高兴的时候更容易看到一张笑脸，或者当你难过的时候更容易看到一张皱眉的脸？这就是所谓的情感视觉效应。在最初的实验中，目前的研究人员证明了一个人的感觉确实会影响他或她有意识地看到的东西。在这里提出的研究中，他们将研究情感影响视力的机制。通过关注情感视觉效应的机制，这项研究将提供证据，与人们每天冷静地观察周围世界的印象背道而驰。根据一个人的感受，他或她会以不同的方式看待世界(这不仅仅是一个解释的问题)。而且，如果一个人经常感到快乐，在朋友或同事面前看到短暂的微笑，而另一个人经常感到痛苦，看到短暂的皱眉和鬼脸，那么这两个人生活在体验上不同的世界，即使实际的物理世界是相同的。这项工作的发现将有可能确定某些类型的生活经历(例如，长期吸毒、生活在城市贫困中、或处于高基本威胁或长期压力的环境中)是否会让人们以不同的方式看待世界。除了这类影响外，这项研究还将通过为波士顿科学博物馆的本科生、研究生和赞助人提供科学教育，产生重大的教育影响。

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.