Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544.
Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2019 Jan 2;116(1):328-333. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1816581115. Epub 2018 Dec 17.
As a part of social cognition, people automatically construct rich models of other people's vision. Here we show that when people judge the mechanical forces acting on an object, their judgments are biased by another person gazing at the object. The bias is consistent with an implicit perception that gaze adds a gentle force, pushing on the object. The bias was present even though the participants were not explicitly aware of it and claimed that they did not believe in an extramission view of vision (a common folk view of vision in which the eyes emit an invisible energy). A similar result was not obtained on control trials when participants saw a blindfolded face turned toward the object, or a face with open eyes turned away from the object. The findings suggest that people automatically and implicitly generate a model of other people's vision that uses the simplifying construct of beams coming out of the eyes. This implicit model of active gaze may be a hidden, yet fundamental, part of the rich process of social cognition, contributing to how we perceive visual agency. It may also help explain the extraordinary cultural persistence of the extramission myth of vision.
作为社会认知的一部分，人们会自动构建其他人视觉的丰富模型。在这里，我们表明，当人们判断作用在一个物体上的机械力时，他们的判断会受到另一个人注视该物体的影响。这种偏差与一种隐含的感知一致，即注视会施加一种柔和的力，推动物体。即使参与者没有明确意识到这一点，并声称他们不相信视觉的发射观点（一种常见的视觉民间观点，即眼睛发出看不见的能量），这种偏差仍然存在。在控制试验中，当参与者看到蒙住眼睛的脸朝向物体，或者眼睛睁开的脸背离物体时，没有得到类似的结果。研究结果表明，人们会自动且隐含地生成其他人视觉的模型，该模型使用了从眼睛中射出光线的简化结构。这种隐含的主动注视模型可能是丰富的社会认知过程中的一个隐藏但基本的部分，有助于我们感知视觉主体。它也可能有助于解释视觉发射神话非凡的文化持久性。
