How we feel affects what we see

People who place an emphasis on positive things and are generally optimistic are sometimes said to "see the world through rose-tinted glasses". According to a new study by Canadian researchers, this is more than just an idiom. The study, which has just been published in the Journal of Neuroscience, provides the first direct evidence that the mood we are in affects the way we see things by modulating the activity of the visual cortex. Their findings show that putting on the proverbial rose-tinted glasses of a good mood is not so much about colour, but about the broadness of the view.

A number of behavioural studies have already shown that emotions can have an effect on perception. When, for example, observers are asked to selectively pay attention to a target at the centre of the visual field while ignoring surrounding "distractor" objects, the prior induction of a positive emotional state leads to more interference from the surrounding objects than does induction of a negative mood. Likewise, positive moods are associated with a tendency to perceive global components, and negative moods with the local components, of a visuospatial stimulus.

However, the exact neural mechanisms of these phenomena are unclear. One possibility is that mood has a "top-down" effect on vision, such that higher order cognitive processes impinge on the visual areas of the brain. Alternatively, mood may have a direct effect on the early stages of visual processing. Taylor Schmitz of the Affect and Cognition Laboratory at the University of Toronto and his colleagues hypothesized that positive emotional states would broaden the field of view, whereas negative states would have the opposite effect. To test their hypothesis, the researchers recruited 14 participants and used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to monitor their visual cortical activity whilst they looked at various images.

The participants were shown photographs of faces expressing positive, negative or neutral emotions. Each of these was presented for 2 seconds, and followed by a composite image consisting of a face at the centre surrounded by photographs of houses or places. The first image of each pair served to induce a specific mood; participants were asked to report the emotion induced by each face, and also to judge the sex of the faces in the composite images, so that they focused their attention at the centre rather than the periphery. This experimental design exploited the knowledge that the fusiform face area (FFA) and parahippocampal place area (PPA) are selectively activated in response to faces and novel places, respectively, and so enabled the researchers to directly examine the effect of positive and negative emotional states on the encoding of composite images.

fMRI_parahippocampal.JPG

The researchers found a strong correlation between the participants' self-reported moods and the magnitude of the PPA response. The positive mood induced by the photographs of faces was positively correlated with increased processing of the novel places depicted in the composite images which followed, as revealed by increased activity in the left PPA (above). By contrast, negative moods had the opposite effect - they were associated with reduced PPA activity. In other words, inducing a good mood in the participants caused an increase in the scope of their field of vision, whereas inducing a negative mood reduced their visual field.

Thus, positive moods enhanced peripheral vision and increased the extent to which the brain encoded information in those parts of the visual field, to which the participants did not pay attention. Conversely, negative moods decreased the encoding of peripheral information. But does the enhanced peripheral vision that occurs because of positive mood induction come at the expense of central (or "foveal") vision? Schmitz and his colleagues compared FFA activity in the positive and negative mood induction trials, but found no difference. The enhanced peripheral vision following positive mood induction does not, therefore, occur as a result of a trade-off with central vision.

Evolutionarily, these effects might be explained as follows. A negative mood, such as fear or sadness, causes one's attention to be focused on specific details, at the expense of information in the periphery. An example of this is the so-called "weapon effect": those who witness a crime involving a weapon normally have an impaired memory for the appearance of the perpetrator, because their attention shifts to the weapon. The negative emotional content of the event enhances the visual processes by which the specific details (the weapon) are perceived and later remembered. This occurs at the expense of irrelevant peripheral information, which is suppressed, or filtered out. Such mechanisms would serve to increase one's vigilance in a possibly life-threatening situation.

On the other hand, positive emotions broaden the scope of the visual field, leading to increased breadth of attention; this new study shows that positive moods do so by directly modulating the visual system so that we can gain access to to more information. In psychology, the broaden-and build theory holds that positive emotions enhance one's awareness, and that this global perspective encourages novel thoughts and actions. This broadened behavioural repertoire in turn leads to increased creativity and inventiveness.

Related:


Schmitz, T. et al (2009). Opposing Influences of Affective State Valence on Visual Cortical Encoding. J. Neurosci. 29: 7199-7207. DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.5387-08.2009

More like this

You often hear that happy people see the world differently. They look through 'rose colored glasses' or 'on the bright side.' There are a lot of phrases that connect mood and sight. Those less optimistic, as well, claim to 'see things as they are.' It's no surprise, then, that new research,…
Mo, over at Neurophilosophy, has a fantastic summary of a new paper from scientists at the University of Toronto investigating the link between affective mood and visual perception. The basic moral is this: If you want to improve your peripheral vision, or become better at noticing seemingly…
Music can be thought of as a form of emotional communication, with which the performer conveys an emotional state to the listener. This "language" is remarkably powerful - it can evoke strong emotions, and make your heart race or send tingles down your spine. And it is universal - the emotional…
Recent advances in functional neuroimaging have enabled researchers to predict perceptual experiences with a high degree of accuracy. For example, it is possible to determine whether a subject is looking at a face or some other category of visual stimulus, such as a house. This is possible because…

Very interesting article. Thanks!:)

By Begoña (not verified) on 11 Jun 2009 #permalink

Rose colored glasses: 50 years ago I had an experience as I was driving home. It was glorious. I had to stop the car as a gentle tornado of glittering gold particles encased me and everything in my field of vision was bathed in rose. 30 years later, I learned that Hindu beliefs consider this to be the opening of the heart chakra, whose color is rose and whose metal is gold. In religious iconography, the Hindu God, Hanuman and the Christian Jesus are painted with a rose sacred heart topped by a golden lotus and golden flame, respectively. A scene in a William Styron novel was a rose vista of Paris. Sir Francis Bacon's secret society was Rosecrucian. Rose colored sun glasses worn by B-17 WWII pilots were made with coloidal gold.

We, the human beings have the tendency to interpret what we see, and experience through the emotions that are invoked by these different mediums. We are meaning making machines! The interpretations are based on out values, emotional states and in reality, As a result, there is an assumption that what we see is the way things are. Never do we question the accuracy of this information, we simply take it as fact .So, the way we perceive things has the power to shape how we think and act in the world.
it continues there:
http://singyourownlullaby.blogspot.com/2009/03/life-interpreter.html

Is the converse true? Does taking a broader view of things, e.g. viewing the panorama stars at night, lead to more positive mood? Have you any research on this?

By beholdtheman (not verified) on 20 Jun 2009 #permalink

very useful for my TOK essay to show that emotions lead to 'we see and understand things not as they are but as we are.'

By Alice Chin (not verified) on 26 Jul 2009 #permalink

Interesting article. Perception works two ways - one as indicated by this article and the other by what you expect to perceive you see - all things outside your personal awareness and acceptance are not consciously perceived. While the brain processes billions of impressions every second across the light spectrum from hertzian through infrared, visible light, ultraviolet , xray gamma ray and beyond, it takes a developed consciousness to actually perceive the data/information being transmitted in these frequencies and being registered in the brain.
Ultimately, you only see what you expect to see. Like the story of the indigenous Indians in South America - not recognizing the spanish galeons approaching their shores because it wasn't within their reality of acceptance or understanding.
Perception always expands along with knowledge - so the more you know - the more you know....

Very interesting - I often find that I work a LOT better when I'm in a good mood because I can see the big picture. But once I make one mistake, I'm in a bad mood, and usually make about a dozen more by the end of the day. :S

Alice Chin: Lol to the TOK essay, I did the IB 5 years ago or so, I have to say I don't miss that subject. It opened my mind to the point where I didn't believe in ANYTHING anymore and had a huge existential crisis!

Haha I am also using the information i learned from this blog to write my TOK prescribed essay

I am curious as to whether this study has been replicated in Japan, Korea or China because of the study by Masuda & Nisbett in which those raised in eastern countries who were shown images of a fish in an aquarium were likely to perceive more of the background details compared to those raised in the west who instead focussed on the lone fish. http://www.ualberta.ca/~tmasuda/stimuli.htm

And thank you for this blog!

By Gretchen Breese (not verified) on 17 Feb 2010 #permalink

Precisely. What i feel is that the world we perceive is majorly composed of what we chose it to be composed according to our hierarchy of senses. You know, we unconsciously choose to select only certain things and involuntarily give them status, thus building a world of noticed and unnoticed selections.