Lights Out: The Effects of Brightness on Judging Morally Ambiguous Behavior

Just this passed semester, your blog team had conducted a research based on a question posed Banerjee, Chatterjee, and Sinha (2012) regarding the association of brightness and darkness to moral judgment.

Given that light and dark appear to be linked to moral behavior, can ambient light affect the perception and evaluation of morally ambiguous behaviors?

 Their original study showed that when participants were asked to recall a good deed they have done in the past, they judged the room they were in to be brighter while participants who were asked to recall a morally wrong behavior in the past, judged the room to be darker (Banerjee, et. al., 2012).

Our research aimed to find out whether the brightness of the room affected the participants' judgments of a morally ambiguous behavior, and guess what? It did, and what more, participants who were in the bright condition gave softer, kinder forms of punishment and were more inclined to give a reward to the doer of the morally ambiguous behavior while participants in the dark condition gave harsher, stricter punishments and none were inclined to give any form of reward to the doer of the ambiguous behavior.

Light and dark have always been connected with good and evil. In media, villains, demons and evil are always depicted in dark colors while protagonists, angels and goodness are depicted in a brighter more vibrant manner.

Can you tell which ones are the angels of Paradiso and which ones are the infernal demons of Inferno from the pictures on the left? The pictures come from a game called Bayonetta and in this game, Paradise and angels are depicted in bright hues of white and gold while demons and infernal representations are depicted in hues of black, purple and red. In the Holy Bible, Jesus is known as the "Light of the world" while Lucifer is known as the "Prince of darkness" who disguises himself as an "Angel of light" to trick the people of the world. When I tell you to imagine heaven, do you imagine a dark and dim place or a bright, well-lit place?

Yin (black) and Yang (white): Respectively, negative and positive energies

Depression: Is it all in the mind?

Claude Monet's painting of his dying wife Camille

Clinical depression is something that isn't that much explored here in the Philippines. Sometimes, people just use the term colloquially saying they are "depressed" with a meaning that they are sad or heartbroken or feeling under the weather. Maybe you have used the term to refer to those moods as well. However, because of this, people who are clinically depressed almost always end up getting judged to be just "dramatic" or being "irresponsible" when they are experiencing the bouts of depression. Sometimes, we just assume it is temporary and tell them to cheer up or worse, tell them that there are worse things in life and they should think of their problem in comparison to others. I've recently witnessed three people who were/are depressed and it isn't something they can just snap out of.

Depressed people often report seeing the world as a dull, grey world. You can often see these dark, somber colors being used by artists in their works and paintings depicting sadness and depression. It isn't actually just an artistic representation. Studies showed that there are biological reasoning behind these phenomena.

Depression actually affects your visual perception by affecting cognitive functioning. Bubl and his coworkers (2010) found that people who were depressed had an impaired contrast perception as opposed to healthy individuals. The study showed that the depressed participants were less able to detect contrast differences in black and white checkerboard patterns shown to them. This was shown through the electrical recordings of their retinal activities measured through electrodes attached near the participants' eyes. The more severe the depression, the less were the electrical responses of their retina to contrasts. Antidepressants and other medications didn't make a difference on the results of the study.

This study is actually very helpful in the future assessment of depression among individuals. These electrical responses provide psychiatrists with more objective means of measurement for depression and its severity among those affected with it. Having this dulled contrast perception can prolong the depressive state of the individual and can feed into the depressed person's mood.

References:

Bubl E., Kern, E., Ebert, D., Bach, M., and Tebartz van Elst, L. (2010). Seeing Gray When Feeling Blue? Depression Can Be Measured in the Eye of the Diseased. Retrieved November 2012 from http://www.scribd.com/doc/34591834/Seeing-Gray-When-Feeling-Blue-Depression-Can-Be-Measured-in-the-Eye-of-the-Diseased

Larance, J. (2010). Depression really does make everything look grey. In The Independent. Retrieved November 2012 from http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/depression-really-does-make-everything-look-grey-2031296.html

I'm So Chubby

It's never enough

Eating disorders and the perception of weight

When I first saw the picture on the left on 9gag months ago which was used as a meme, the first thing that came on my mind was "I want to look like her". Demented right? Here we see a girl depicted as having an eating disorder yet most girls probably die to be like her. Unfortunately sometimes, it is applicable literally.

Weight and appearance are things highly regarded as important in our current society. They put emphasis on thinness through promoting diet pills like Xenical, exposing thin celebrities and fashion models, introducing fad diet plans, exercise regimen and whatnot. Often, heroines introduced in movies, considered to be desirable are the ones who are thin while heavier celebrities are often used as comedic characters, even if they are the stars of the show. It isn't a shock to hear actresses like say, Beyonce Knowles for Dream Girls lose 20 lbs to play a role.

Thumbelina Sightings

Thumbelina

Kia: [Real-life Thumbelina?] Chos lang XD Bakit ang laki ng picture ko ang daya!!! Hahaha 

Is there really such a thing as a real-life Thumbelina? Or a minimized person that can fit into one's palm? Sorry to pop your bubble but they don't really exist. Reality isn't as magical as fairytales but thankfully, we can somehow escape from this objectivity through visual illusions. 

Visual illusions or more commonly known as optical illusions are a phenomena by which our visual system fabricates a three-dimensional interpretation of the world (Eagleman, 2001) based from the two-dimensional representation in our retina. Basically, it just means that our perception of the world does not tally with the actual size or depth or distance of these actual objects due to these illusions . We are also often fascinated by them since through visual illusions, we are effortlessly and easily challenged whether what we see is real (Bach & Poloschek, 2006).

Like in the picture above, we didn't actually find a pixie in school or invent a shrinking device, or even use CGI to create this effect (we can barely even use Photoshop). That's actually Sarj, one of the bloggers who went a couple of strides behind Kia and strategically posed to create this special effect. 

See? You can even see her shadow on the floor.

The perceived change in size of Sarj is due to her more distant position. Since she is farther from the observer's eye, she subtends a smaller visual angle than Kia, thus making her appear smaller. Well, visual angle is just the angle of an object relative to the observer's eye (Goldstein, 2010) or how the angle of the object of interest subtends at the eye.

Moreover, visual angle is influenced by the size of the stimulus and the distance of the object from the observer. The farther the object from the observer, the larger the visual angle it subtends, whereas when it is nearer, the visual angle is small.

Thumbelina: take 2

vs.

Thumbelina: take 3

Actually this trick has also been used by filmmakers such as Peter Jackson in the Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring to accomplish interactions between normal sized humans and in the case of the LOTR, hobbits without the use of CGI. You can see how this was done (and other interesting non-CGI effects) in this article in Cracked. 

It basically uses the concept of forced perspective, wherein optical illusions are used to make an object appear different in distance and/or size than the actual reality (Bell, 2011).

Frodo and Gandalf are perceived to be sitting side-by-side

Frodo is actually sitting several feet away from Gandalf to make Frodo look smaller

Try it at home!

Close one eye and form the forefinger and thumb of the hand opposite the closed eye into a letter C (or a backward letter C). Try fitting a distant object between that space and then when you're sure, approach the object without moving your fingers and see which is bigger!

Who is taller?

Who do you think is taller of the two ladies standing there? The one on the left or the one on the right (imagine they're wearing the same shoes)?

Actually, they are both the same height! You've been deceived by what we call the Müller-Lyer Illusion. This happens when our visual system judges fins or angles that are "protruding out" to be longer, but those that are "protruding in" to be shorter (Goldstein, 2010). 

Muller-Lyer Illusion: Can you tell at first glance which one of the vertical lines is longer?

It is also interesting to note that perception of Muller-Lyer illusion is influenced by culture (Masuda, 2009). Westerners or individuals who grew up in a "carpented" world, perceive lines with protruding fins as longer, since they have been regularly exposed to corners of rectilinear objects. One the other hand, some cultures (e.g. hunters-gatherers) are said to be immune to the Muller-Lyer illusion, suggesting that perception is influenced by environment and previous knowledge.

Real-life application!

Are you the shortest among your friends? Fret not! The next time you take a group picture, put your hands up into a Y. You'll look like you're having the time of your life and you'll probably gain a few centimeters in height*. To make it even more effective, ask your friends to help you out by keeping their arms in an invered V position.

*Results are not guaranteed!

A thumb for a head

Is her head really smaller than a thumb? Or about as big as a thumbnail? I think you already know the answer to this. [Hint: Thumbelina] But, you might be wondering, why?

Let us take into account again the concept of visual angles. The hand is nearer to the observer, thus having a greater visual angle. It then makes it look bigger than the face.

Hand x 4

Which one of these hands is first in line to have a meaningful conversation with you?

We assume you could probably guess it's the one on the left most part. How did you know that though? What if those hands were actually connected to one another and were actually only just one big hand?

The thing is, our brains are capable of perceiving depth and distance according to a number of factors.

What you've done in this case is actually judge a distance according to shadows, relative size and deletion. Your brain probably registered the shadows which were cast along the hands and judged that those were cast by the hands which are in front of them. 

Parting words and a disclaimer in between

Being able to perceive visual illusion is a gift.. You might have taken it for granted before, but people with autism are not really susceptible to these illusions (Mitchell & Ropar, 2005). I guess you can be thankful to your properly processing visual system, but visual illusion perception does not come from this alone. Your previous experiences, environment, and knowledge play a role in enabling you to perceive these. Visual illusions actually look convincing only if you want them to (Ganel, Tanzer, & Goodale, 2008). So really, you can believe there exists a Thumbelina in this world. :)

A crash course on Photoshop, this was not.

What do you do when you're asked to take pictures demonstrating depth and size?

Whip out your cellphones and take pictures, silly!

And that's what we did.

References:

Bach, M., & Poloschek, C. (2006). Optical Illusions. Visual Neuroscience, 2(6), 20-21. Retrieved from http://www.acnr.co.uk/pdfs/volume6issue2/v6i2visual.pdf

Bell, D. (2011). 8 Movie Special Effects You Won't Believe Aren't CGI. Retrieved from  http://www.cracked.com/article_19140_8-movie-special-effects-you-wont-believe-arent-cgi.html

Eagleman, D. (2001). Visual Illusions and Neuorobiology. Nature Reviews, 2(1), 920-926. Retrieved from http://physiology.elte.hu/gyakorlat/cikkek/Visual%20illusions%20and%20neurobiology.pdf

Ganel, T., Tanzer, M., & Goodale, M. (2008) A Double Dissociation Between Action and Perception in the Context of Visual Illusions: Opposite Effects of Real and Illusory Size. Psychological Science, 19(3) , 221–225. Retrieved from Ebsco database.

Goldstein, E. (2010). Sensation and Perception 8th ed. Belmont, CA: Cengage Learning.

Masuda, T. (2009). Cultural effects on visual perception. Cultural Psychology, 339-343. Retrieved from http://www.ualberta.ca/~tmasuda/Masuda(2009).pdf

Mitchell, P. & Ropar, D. (2005). Visuo-spatial abilities in autism: a review. Infant and child development, 1-30. Retrieved from http://www.psychology.nottingham.ac.uk/staff/peter.mitchell/icd%20article.pdf

[Untitled image of Master Yoda]. (n.d.). Retrieved September 9, 2012 from http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20111008200711/starwars/images/3/31/TPM-CGYoda.JPG

Summer is here! ....Aaaaaand it's gone

Have you ever noticed that time goes by faster now than before? One day you were 15, freshly graduated from your care-free days at high school then the next moment you realize you're having a crisis on which jobs you can take before your parents kick you out from their houses effectively cutting your free internet connection (you better start searching for the nearest McDonald's - no, you can't afford Starbucks).