Visuomotor states of an observer influence person perception: The critical role of emotion

心理学的一个传统观点是，感知过程，如看、听和闻，与行动过程，如走路或拿起一个物体是分开的。我们的工作以及最近的其他研究越来越多地表明，事实上，视觉等感知过程与行动密切相关，而且这是一种双向关系。在一个方向上，视觉信息被自动转化为行动，即使一个人没有行动的意图。例如，当看到一个物体，如咖啡杯，抓住杯子的动作被激活，即使没有明显的动作被观察到（例如，塔克和埃利斯，1998）。更令人惊讶的是，当观察另一个人的行为时，比如踢足球，类似的动作系统在观察者身上变得隐秘活跃，就好像他们在做同样的动作一样。相反，身体的动作状态可以反馈到感知过程，影响我们如何感知和理解我们周围的世界（例如，Bach & Tipper, 2007）。例如，我们对咖啡杯有了更好的理解，因为适当的行为变得活跃，我们更好地了解其他人，因为通过模拟他们的行为，我们真的把自己置于他们当前的身体状态中。我们建议测试新的假设，即情绪对后一种过程至关重要。也就是说，在许多情况下，身体状态会影响感知过程，但前提是身体状态会引起情绪反应。例如，我们已经证明，在观看另一个人时，促进的视觉运动处理可以改变我们对那个人的看法。因此，如果一个人在做特定的动作（比如踢球）时更容易识别，我们就会开始相信他们特别擅长那个动作，在这个例子中，他们会被评估为一个运动健将。关键的是，被观察的人没有反映运动能力的属性，而是观察者的视觉-行动流畅性被错误地归因于被观察的人。然而，我们的新想法是，只有当更流畅的视觉运动过程触发观察者的积极情绪反应时，才会产生这些人的错误归因效应。为了检验我们的想法，我们采用了一种技术来记录一个人在完成这些任务时的情绪反应。也就是说，我们可以记录一个人的面部肌肉，在那里我们发现，在更积极的情绪状态下，与微笑相关的颧颊肌变得更加活跃，而在不那么积极的情绪状态下，与皱眉相关的皱眉肌变得更加活跃。预测是，只有在视觉动作过程中产生积极和消极反应的个体才会表现出运动加工对他们对物体和他人的感知的影响。将进行一系列实验来验证这一想法；这些将检验人们的感性判断（比如信任），以及检验我们的方法是否对无意识记忆过程的研究有价值。这项研究的潜在副产品是利用这些技术来衡量消费者对新产品的反应。而不是采用典型的焦点小组技术，个人必须明确地讨论他们的感受，隐性测量可以检测情绪反应，而不需要如此复杂和人为的内省过程。进一步的衍生可能是在临床心理学方面。例如，在抑郁症或自闭症中，受损的情绪过程可能会阻碍身体/运动状态对知觉解释和学习的通常影响。

A traditional view within Psychology has been that perceptual processes, such as seeing, hearing and smelling, are separate to action processes such as walking or picking up an object. Our work, along with other recent studies, has increasingly shown that in fact perceptual processes such as vision are intimately linked with actions, and that this is a bi-directional relationship. In one direction, visual information is automatically converted into action, even if a person has no intentions to act. For example, when viewing an object such as a coffee cup, the action of grasping the cup is activated, even though no overt action is observed (e.g., Tucker & Ellis, 1998). Even more strikingly, when observing another person act, such as kicking a soccer ball, similar action systems become covertly active in the observer, as if they were doing the same action. In the opposite direction, action states of the body can feedback on to perceptual processes, influencing how we perceive and understand the world around us (e.g., Bach & Tipper, 2007). For example, we have a better understanding of a coffee cup, because the appropriate actions become active, and we better understand other people because via simulation of their actions we quite literally put ourselves in to their current body states. We propose to test the novel hypothesis that emotion can be critical to these latter processes. That is, body states influence perceptual processes in many situations, but only if the body state evokes an emotional reaction. For example, we have shown that facilitated visual-motor processing while viewing another person can change how we perceive that person. Thus, if it is easier to identify a person while they are doing a particular action, such as kicking a ball, we start to believe they are particularly good at that action, and in this example would be assessed as an athletic person. Critically there is no property of the viewed person that reflects athletic ability, rather the vision-action fluency in the observer is misattributed to the viewed person. However our new idea is that these person misattribution effects are only produced when the more fluent vision-motor processes trigger positive emotional reactions in the observer. We have employed a technique to record the emotional reactions of a person on-line during such tasks to test our ideas. That is, we can record from the face muscles of a person, where it has been discovered that during more positive states the zygomaticus cheek muscle associated with smiling becomes more active, while during less positive emotional states the corrugator brow muscle associated with frowning becomes more active. The prediction is that only individuals who produce positive and negative reactions during vision-action processes will show effects of motor processing on their perception of objects and other people. A range of experiments will be undertaken to test this idea; these will examine perceptual judgments of people (such as trust), as well as examining whether our methods will be of value for studies of unconscious memory processes. A potential spin-off from this research is the use of such techniques to measure consumers' reactions to new products. Rather than employing the typical focus group techniques where individuals have to explicitly discuss their feelings, implicit measures can detect emotional reactions without requiring such complex and artificial introspective processes. A further spin off may be in terms of clinical psychology. For example, in depression or autism impaired emotional processes may block the usual effects of body/motor states on perceptual interpretations and learning.