Affective Space: Social Influences in Perception

与社会判断不同，感性判断植根于具体的现实，被认为是独立于社会背景的。然而，最近的研究表明，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。这项拟议的研究探索了知觉中的这些社会和情感因素。与传统理论不同的是，生态学方法表明，感知可能取决于以前没有考虑到的背景因素。例如，一些研究表明，对于背负沉重背包的人来说，山丘似乎更陡峭(Bhala&Amp；Proffitt，1999)。背景因素影响感知，因为它们与行动相关：对于一个受阻碍的人来说，一座山更难攀登，因此看起来更陡峭。与物理属性(如沉重背包的重量)不同，人们对更多的“心理”属性知之甚少，如互动环境的社会和情感性质。众所周知，社交和情感因素，如在一个群体中或心情良好，会影响社会判断，如生活满意度评级。这项拟议中的研究将探索知觉判断是否同样受到“情境的力量”的影响。这项拟议的研究的目标是确定社会和情感因素在多大程度上塑造了人们的认知。几项研究将考察一些不同因素对估计到物体的距离和山坡倾斜的影响，例如是否有另一个人在场，或者判断对象具有什么情感价值观。在此基础上，这项拟议研究的另一个成果是开发了揭示人们对各种刺激的情感反应的感知测量方法。也就是说，如果人们的感觉影响了他们感知到态度对象的距离，那么人们也应该从他们感知的距离中推断出他们的态度。通过检验这些假设，我们期望对社会因素如何影响先前假定不受此类影响的基本过程有一个初步的了解。该项目的更广泛影响包括为参与研究的人员提供教育经验，如为该项目工作的本科生和研究生，以及为研究参与者提供的教育经验，这些参与者将在参与后作为汇报的一部分获得有关研究的详细信息。这项研究促进了跨学科和国际合作。该项目的调查结果预计将由公共媒体广泛传播，因为参与该项目的调查人员之前的研究在大众媒体上引起了相当大的关注。涉及参与者的性别、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.