An effect of mood on the perception of geographical slant

Abstract

Previous research has shown that hills appear steeper to those who are fatigued, encumbered, of low physical fitness, elderly, or in declining health (Bhalla & Proffitt, 1999; Proffitt, Bhalla, Gossweiler, & Midgett, 1995). The prevailing interpretation of this research is that observers’ perceptions of the environment are influenced by their capacity to navigate that environment. The current studies extend this programme by investigating more subtle embodied effects on perception of slant; namely those of mood. In two studies, with two different mood manipulations, and two estimates of slant in each, observers in a sad mood reported hills to be steeper. These results support the role of mood and motivational factors in influencing spatial perception, adding to the previous work showing that energetic potential can influence perception.

Keywords:

• Mood
• Slant perception
• Emotion and perception
• Space perception
• Embodied perception

Acknowledgements

The experiments reported in this article were part of Cedar Riener's dissertation research conducted at the University of Virginia. This research was supported in part by a University of Virginia Faculty Senate Dissertation Year Fellowship awarded to the first author.

The authors wish to thank Blair Hopkins and Margaret Perschy for their help in collecting the data, as well as Jessica Witt, Jonathan Bakdash, Jonathan Zadra, and Sally Linkenauger and Tom Banton for comments on earlier drafts.

Notes

¹Although it is useful to consciously overestimate the slant of the hill, when one ascends the hill, actions must be appropriate to the physical slant of the hill. In the present studies (as in past ones), we distinguish between explicit awareness of the hill slant, assessed by a verbal measure (“How many degrees is that hill?”), a visual matching device, and an understanding of slant that supports action, reflected in a haptic measure. In previous experiments (Proffitt, 2006), the explicit awareness measures (verbal and visual) exhibit large overestimations, but the haptic measure evokes relatively accurate responses. Despite overestimation of slant, we still are able to act on the hills appropriately (i.e., we do not place our foot as if a hill were overestimated), and the palmboard measurement seems to reflect this fact.

²The conscious estimates were of more interest for the current studies, and were therefore first, to minimise influence of the haptic estimate, which in previous studies (Proffitt, 2006) has been found to be unaffected by manipulation of physiological state. The verbal and visual estimates were counterbalanced to account for any influence they might have on each other.