Guilt leads to enhanced facing-the-viewer bias

<div><p>As an important moral emotion, guilt plays a critical role in social interaction. It has been found that people tended to exhibit prosocial behavior under circumstances of guilt. However, all extant studies have predominantly focused on the influence of guilt on macro-level behavior. So far, no study has investigated whether guilt affects people’s micro-level perception. The current study closes this gap by examining whether guilt affects one’s inclination to perceive approaching motion. We achieved this aim by probing a facing-the-viewer bias (FTV bias). Specifically, when an ambiguous walking biological motion display is presented to participants via the point-light display technique, participants tend to perceive a walking agent approaching them. We hypothesized that guilt modulated FTV bias. To test this hypothesis, we adopted a two-person situation induction task to induce guilt, whereby participants were induced to feel that because of their poor task performance, their partner did not receive a satisfactory payment. We found that when participants were told that the perceived biological motion was motion-captured from their partner, the FTV bias was significantly increased for guilty participants relative to neutral participants. However, when participants were informed that the perceived biological motion was from a third neutral agent, the FTV bias was not modulated by guilt. These results suggest that guilt influences one’s inclination to perceive approaching motion, but this effect is constrained to the person towards whom guilt is directed.</p></div

The correlation between individual VWM capacity and the corresponding N270 amplitude of the irrelevant change.

<p>The red line is the linear regression line fitting the data points.</p

Results of Experiment 3.

<p>Mean probe performance for different targets with error bars (SE).</p

Diagrammatical explanation of the 2-D view of the 3-D projection space.

<p>The solid gray lines represent the projection lines of the perspective projections (3 field-of-view angles: 87°, 58°, and 31°). These three angles were determined via a pilot experiment (<i>n</i> = 8): 58° was the point of subjective ambiguity when perceiving ambiguous BM (i.e., 50% perception of motion towards participants and 50% perception of motion away); at 31°, participants were inclined to judge the BM display as walking towards them, while at 87°, participants were inclined to judge the BM display as walking away. The gray dots represent projection plane. The black dots represent the point-light walker which is walking away from the projection plane.</p

Score for the first five questions in Experiment 1 (error bars represent standard errors).

<p>Score for the first five questions in Experiment 1 (error bars represent standard errors).</p

The results for the low- and high-capacity groups when shape was the task-irrelevant information.

<p>The top row shows the accuracy for the low-capacity group (A) and the high-capacity group (B), respectively. The bottom row shows the ERP results for the low-capacity group (C) and the high-capacity group (D), respectively.</p

The Role of Spatial Configuration in Multiple Identity Tracking

<div><p>Background</p><p>The simultaneous tracking and identification of multiple moving objects encountered in everyday life requires one to correctly bind identities to objects. In the present study, we investigated the role of spatial configuration made by multiple targets when observers are asked to track multiple moving objects with distinct identities.</p><p>Methodology/Principal Findings</p><p>The overall spatial configuration made by the targets was manipulated: In the constant condition, the configuration remained as a virtual convex polygon throughout the tracking, and in the collapsed condition, one of the moving targets (critical target) crossed over an edge of the virtual polygon during tracking, destroying it. Identification performance was higher when the configuration remained intact than when it collapsed (Experiments 1a, 1b, and 2). Moreover, destroying the configuration affected the allocation of dynamic attention: the critical target captured more attention than did the other targets. However, observers were worse at identifying the critical target and were more likely to confuse it with the targets that formed the virtual crossed edge (Experiments 3–5). <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0093835#s9" target="_blank">Experiment 6</a> further showed that the visual system constructs an overall configuration only by using the targets (and not the distractors); identification performance was not affected by whether the distractor violated the spatial configuration.</p><p>Conclusions/Significance</p><p>In sum, these results suggest that the visual system may integrate targets (but not distractors) into a spatial configuration during multiple identity tracking, which affects the distribution of dynamic attention and the updating of identity-location binding.</p></div

Behavioral results of Experiment 2.

<p>The left column shows the accuracy (A) and RT (B) of the low-capacity group. The right column shows the accuracy (D) and RT (D) of the high-capacity group.</p

Illustration of the target categories during configuration collapse.

<p>The left panel illustrates the configuration prior to collapse, and the right panel illustrates the moment when target “C” crossed edge “AB”.</p

Results of Experiments 1a and 1b.

<p>A: The results of Experiment 1a. B: The results of Experiment 1b. Both panels depict mean tracking and identification performance with error bars (SE).</p