See what you want to see: Motivational influences on visual perception.

Balcetis, Emily; Dunning, David

doi:10.1037/0022-3514.91.4.612

Cited by 568 publications

(463 citation statements)

References 92 publications

(92 reference statements)

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“…These authors showed that individuals with egalitarian vs. inegalitarian values diverged in their ratings of how aggressively the police treated protesters depending on whether they were that told the demonstrators were protesting in opposition to abortion or in favor of gays' entry to the military. Balcetis and Dunning (2006) showed that individuals were more likely to perceive the same ambiguous shape as a "B" when "13" was associated with an undesired outcome, but as "13" when the outcome assignments were switched, providing evidence that individuals' motivations can exert top-down influences even on individuals' visual perception.…”

Section: Evidence For Motivated Cognitionmentioning

confidence: 93%

Hierarchy in the eye of the beholder: (Anti-)egalitarianism shapes perceived levels of social inequality.

Kteily

Sheehy‐Skeffington

2017

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

116

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Debate surrounding the issue of inequality and hierarchy between social groups has become increasingly prominent in recent years. At the same time, individuals disagree about the extent to which inequality between advantaged and disadvantaged groups exists. Whereas prior work has examined the ways in which individuals legitimize (or delegitimize) inequality as a function of their motivations, we consider whether individuals' orientation towards group-based hierarchy motivates the extent to which they perceive inequality between social groups in the first place. Across 8 studies in both realworld (race, gender, and class) and artificial contexts, and involving members of both advantaged and disadvantaged groups, we show that the more individuals endorse hierarchy between groups, the less they perceive inequality between groups at the top and groups at the bottom. Perceiving less inequality is associated with rejecting egalitarian social policies aimed at reducing it. We show that these differences in hierarchy perception as a function of individuals' motivational orientation hold even when inequality is depicted abstractly using images, and even when individuals are financially incentivized to accurately report their true perceptions. Using a novel methodology to assess accurate memory of hierarchy, we find that differences may be driven by both anti-egalitarians underestimating inequality, and egalitarians overestimating it. In sum, our results identify a novel perceptual bias rooted in individuals' chronic motivations towards hierarchy-maintenance, with the potential to influence their policy attitudes.

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Section: Evidence For Motivated Cognitionmentioning

confidence: 93%

Hierarchy in the eye of the beholder: (Anti-)egalitarianism shapes perceived levels of social inequality.

Kteily

Sheehy‐Skeffington

2017

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

116

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“…It has been shown, for example, that goal-congruent objects (e.g., palatable foods or a glass of water) are perceived as larger in size when the relevant goal (e.g., eating enjoyment or drinking) has been activated by priming (van Koningsbruggen, Stroebe, & Aarts, 2011;Veltkamp, Aarts & Running head: ROLE OF ATTENTION IN GOAL PRIMING 6 Custers, 2008). Also, it has been shown that desires can influence an individual's interpretation of ambiguous stimuli that assign the individual to a favored outcome (Balcetis & Dunning, 2006). Similarly, active goals can hinder performance on other tasks, which suggests attentional distraction from tasks that are unrelated to the goal (Masicampo & Baumeister, 2011a;Masicampo & Baumeister, 2011b).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Goal-directed visual attention drives health goal priming: An eye-tracking experiment.

et al. 2017

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Objective: Several lab and field experiments have shown that goal priming interventions can be highly effective in promoting healthy food choices. Less is known, however, about the mechanisms by which goal priming affects food choice. This experiment tested the hypothesis that goal priming affects food choices through changes in visual attention.Specifically, it was hypothesized that priming with the dieting goal steers attention towards goal-relevant, low energy food products, which in turn increases the likelihood of choosing these products. Methods:In this eye-tracking experiment, 125 participants chose between high and low energy food products in a realistic online supermarket task while their eye movements were recorded with an eye-tracker. One group was primed with a health and dieting goal, a second group was exposed to a control prime, and a third group was exposed to no prime at all. Results:The health goal prime increased low energy food choices and decreased high energy food choices. Furthermore, the health goal prime resulted in proportionally longer total dwell times on low energy food products, and this effect mediated the goal priming effect on choices. Conclusions:The findings suggest that the effect of priming on consumer choice may originate from an increase in attention for prime-congruent items. This study supports the effectiveness of health goal priming interventions in promoting healthy eating and opens up directions for research on other behavioral interventions that steer attention towards healthy foods.

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“…it relates to experiences that we have made in the past. This suggests a circular organization between our past experiences and future plans, as the goals we pursue seem to organize the environment in a way that we perceive and attune to features that are helpful for us to reach these goals (Clark 2016;Balcetis and Dunning 2006;Bruner 1957;Ferguson and Bargh 2004).…”

Section: Unlearning Through the End: The Loss Of Goalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Leaving Behind What We are Not: Applying a Systems Thinking Perspective to Present Unlearning as an Enabler for Finding the Best Version of the Self

Grisold¹,

Kaiser²

2017

Journal of Organisational Transformation & Social Change

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In response to criticism on the concept of 'unlearning', we suggested that unlearning on an individual level should be defined as the reduction of the influence of old knowledge on cognitive and/or behavioural processes. In this article, we apply a systems thinking perspective on this definition to explore how far this kind of unlearning can possibly go and what happens if this process is inward-directed, i.e. affects the cognitive and behavioural patterns that define who we are. We take a knowledge perspective on the concept of the self and suggest that unlearning could trigger a disequilibrium, which in turn, enables a deep learning process and guides us to what is referred to as ideal or best version of the self. This does not only have implications for the individual level but it can initiate fundamental change processes in organizations.

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See what you want to see: Motivational influences on visual perception.

Cited by 568 publications

References 92 publications

Hierarchy in the eye of the beholder: (Anti-)egalitarianism shapes perceived levels of social inequality.

Hierarchy in the eye of the beholder: (Anti-)egalitarianism shapes perceived levels of social inequality.

Goal-directed visual attention drives health goal priming: An eye-tracking experiment.

Leaving Behind What We are Not: Applying a Systems Thinking Perspective to Present Unlearning as an Enabler for Finding the Best Version of the Self

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