Micro-valences: perceiving affective valence in everyday objects - PubMed (original) (raw)

Micro-valences: perceiving affective valence in everyday objects

Sophie Lebrecht et al. Front Psychol. 2012.

Abstract

Perceiving the affective valence of objects influences how we think about and react to the world around us. Conversely, the speed and quality with which we visually recognize objects in a visual scene can vary dramatically depending on that scene's affective content. Although typical visual scenes contain mostly "everyday" objects, the affect perception in visual objects has been studied using somewhat atypical stimuli with strong affective valences (e.g., guns or roses). Here we explore whether affective valence must be strong or overt to exert an effect on our visual perception. We conclude that everyday objects carry subtle affective valences - "micro-valences" - which are intrinsic to their perceptual representation.

Keywords: affective valence; micro-valence; object preference; object recognition; visual object perception.

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Figures

Figure 1

Figure 1

A common, everyday object and variety of high-level object properties that may be components of its mental representation.

Figure 2

Figure 2

The valence continuum in (A) illustrates the dimension of valence ranging from strongly positive (red) to strongly negative (blue). As indicated by the dashed gray line, objects perceived to have a valence close to the neutral point on the continuum are nonetheless regarded as having a micro-valence. In (B) the portion of the continuum encompassed by the gray line in (A) has been expanded to represent a finer-grained continuum. The ordering of objects here reflects this expanded continuum, albeit with lesser magnitudes (the ordering of objects in this figure is derived from Lebrecht and Tarr, 2010).

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