Jessica Kate Witt, Ph.D. - US grants

How do we determine if someone poses a threat? To make this assessment, not only do we draw on external cues (e.g., the individual and surrounding environment), but we also use our own internal cues (e.g., our personalities, situations, and contexts) to guide these perceptions and judgments. Theories of embodied social cognition posit that the state of one's body (e.g., clothing or accessories) and behavioral repertoire (e.g., skills and abilities) influence our perceptions and thoughts about other people in our environment. Therefore, simple cues such as what we are wearing or holding can shape how we interpret and understand our social world. The present investigation will examine how holding objects with different meanings can change how we perceive the intentions of others. For example, do we perceive others differently if we are holding a gun versus holding a phone? This research will examine the role of individual differences and situation-specific factors that affect the likelihood that holding a gun will produce false perceptions about the actions of others; for example, whether they incorrectly believe another person is holding a gun instead of another object.

If this type of misperception occurs in real life situations, it could be costly. Falsely perceiving that someone else is holding a gun could lead to negative consequences, including instigating violence towards unarmed individuals who do not pose a significant threat. This research could be relevant for the law and judicial system when violence or other crime results from misunderstandings of threat. Additionally, the findings could be used to educate those who might carry a gun as part of their occupation on how this could shift their observations and judgments, which could mitigate misperceptions. Overall, the proposed work will contribute to our understanding on the importance of individual differences and situational contexts for how we perceive and understand our social surroundings. This is particularly important when the context in question has implications for misperceiving malicious intent of others.

Baseball players who are hitting well proclaim that the ball looks as big as a grapefruit. Tennis players in the zone remark that the ball seems to move in slow motion. These examples, both of which have been confirmed in experiments as a psychological reality, suggest that what a person sees may not be the true, physical state of the world but rather can be biased by action. In the case of athletes, such misperceptions may be inherently interesting, but are unlikely to have a major impact on people's lives. In contrast, similar errors in perception by airplane pilots of runway size, drivers of car distances, or doctors of tumor size are quite concerning. Given the important role of vision in daily life and especially as it relates to safety, it is critical to understand the processes underlying this fundamental ability of the mind. The research project is designed to explore when and how people's visual perception is biased by action. In addition, the research project contributes to the education and training of several graduate students and dozens of undergraduate students. These students are also being trained on how to work alongside scientists with opposing views through a process known as adversarial collaboration. Although this kind of work presents its own challenges, the science is likely to benefit from such collaborations.

There are many important and nuanced ways that action could give rise to errors in perception. Airport runways could appear smaller when the airline pilot is not performing well, fatigued, or hungry, or when environmental conditions are poor such as high winds or strong rainfall. The research project examines the potential impact on vision of action-related effects due to 1) energetic demands of the task, 2) difficulty of the task, and 3) whether or not a task is even possible. In doing so, the research project will uncover the boundaries for which perception is prone to errors explicitly caused by action. The scientists conducting the research are considering the extent to which any effects are artifacts of the experimental setting, as opposed to genuine effects on perception that would impact how perceivers see the surrounding environment in the real world. This is a critical step for ensuring that the studied effects will have implications for daily life. Indeed, many of the experiments forgo traditional laboratory settings to explore how action influences perception in both real environments and in environments that simulate the real world using virtual reality.