What You Feel Influences What You See: The Role of Affective Feelings in Resolving Binocular Rivalry.

ABSTRACT: It seems obvious that what you see influences what you feel, but what if the opposite were also true? What if how you feel can shape your visual experience? In this experiment, we demonstrate that the affective state of a perceiver influences the contents of visual awareness. Participants received positive, negative, and neutral affect inductions and then completed a series of binocular rivalry trials in which a face (smiling, scowling or neutral) was presented to one eye and a house to the other. The percepts "competed" for dominance in visual consciousness. We found, as predicted, that all faces (smiling, scowling, and neutral) were dominant for longer when perceivers experienced unpleasant affect compared to when they were in a neutral state (a social vigilance effect), although scowlin

SUBMITTER: Anderson E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3141576 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature