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Fearful Object Seeing

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Abstract

What is it like to perceive a feared object? According to a popular neo-Gibsonian theory in psychology, fear biases our perceptions of objects so as to encourage particular kinds of actions: when we are afraid, spiders may be perceived as physically closer than they are in order to promote fleeing. Firestone mounted severe criticisms against this view, arguing that these cases are better explained by non-perceptual biases that operate on accurate perceptions of the external environment. In this paper I will argue that fear might indeed distort our perceptions of the world, but not in the way neo-Gibsonians suppose. In the view I favor, perceptual distortions occur as by-products of fearful attention, a special mode of attention that is part of an orchestrated defensive response that prepares the organism to deal effectively with a threat. To argue for this view I will rely on empirical evidence that fearful attention narrows down the focus of attention and favors processing of local rather than global features of stimuli, which may jointly explain why perceptual distortions might occur in fearful object seeing. This view has consequences not only for empirical investigations in fearful perceptual distortions, but also for an explanation of the intentionality of fear and the phenomenal integration of bodily and intentional elements in fear episodes.

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Notes

  1. Granted, in some cases fear will be directed at an abstract or social object rather than a material object; we can fear, for example, the rise of fascism or an upcoming economic recession. In this paper I will focus on fear of material objects and all claims should be understood as restricted to these cases.

  2. The assessment was embedded in a larger questionnaire, so subjects would not detect the purpose of the experiment (Stefanucci et al. 2008, p. 322).

  3. Firestone 2013; Firestone and Scholl 2016; Durgin et al. 2009; Durgin et al. 2012; Shaffer et al. 2013; Valenti and Firestone 2019.

  4. This is known as the “affect-as-information hypothesis.” See Schwarz and Clore 1988.

  5. Philbeck and Witt (2015) consider this possibility. I believe this is the right move for a neo-Gibsonian to make in the face of these challenges.

  6. The amygdala is a complex structure composed of various substructures, each playing its part in the establishment of the defensive organismic state. For ease of exposition I will not go into this level of detail, and refer readers to Ledoux (2000) for further anatomical details.

  7. This is why Vuilleumier calls these effects “emotional attention”. See Vuilleumier 2005 for the precise anatomic details of both pathways.

  8. See Vuilleumier 2005 for review.

  9. Easterbrook 1959, Kahneman 1973, Weltman et al. 1971.

  10. Although it doesn’t mean that the magnitudes of these size distortions will be reflected in subjects’ spatial estimates (see below).

  11. This hypothesis is tentatively endorsed by Cole et al. (2013: 38).

  12. See Zillmann 1971 for the proposal that under conditions of information uncertainty subjects might use emotional arousal as cue.

  13. See section VI.

  14. For instance, on depth (Shahbazi et al. 2011) and width perception (Geuss et al. 2010).

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Acknowledgements

This research is funded in part by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior – Brasil (Capes) - Finance Code 001. I would like to thank Francesco Marchi, Daniel Burnston, Ernesto Perini, Carlos H. Barth, Eduarda Calado, Samuel Maia, Francisco Lages and members of the CLEA research group (Nara Figueiredo, Raquel Krempel, Eros Carvalho, Giovanni Rolla, André Abath, Marco Aurélio Alves and Bia Sorrentino) for comments on earlier drafts, as well as audiences of the I RUB-UFMG Philosophy Workshop and the VI Conference of the Brazilian Society of Analytical Philosophy for feedback. I am also thankful to Chaz Firestone and an anonymous reviewer for their thoughtful comments and suggestions that pushed me to reflect on these questions even deeper.

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  1. Departamento de Filosofia, Faculdade de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Avenida Antonio Carlos, 6627, Belo Horizonte/MG, 31270-901, Brazil

    Felipe Nogueira de Carvalho

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Correspondence to Felipe Nogueira de Carvalho.

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de Carvalho, F.N. Fearful Object Seeing. Rev.Phil.Psych. 13, 627–644 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-021-00549-2

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