A presentation on the perceptual effects of Love and Lust, underlining the interplay of cognition and emotion

1. Perception
AND
Mag.a Jeanna Nikolov-Ramirez
Love: A Multidisciplinary Approach
OFAI, May 2015
#tendersubject
LOVE, LUST
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Is Love Blind?

2. OUTLINE
• What is Love? Lust?
• What is Perception?
• Does love change how
we see?
• Halo effect
• Processing
• Time
• Findings and Further
Questions
• References
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3. TRIANGULAR THEORY OF LOVE
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4. WHAT IS LOVE? WHAT IS LUST?
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Love:
“wishes to self expand and caring for
or identifying with a person, including
feelings of infatuation and emotional
bonding”
Lust:
“wish, need, or drive to seek out sexual
objects or to engage in sexual activities,
including feelings of sexual desire”
Förster, J., Özelsel, A., & Epstude, K. (2010). How love and lust change
people’s perception of relationship partners. Journal of Experimental Social
Psychology, 46(2), 237-246.

5. “..in humans, the process whereby
sensory stimulation is translated
into organized experience. That
experience, or percept, is the joint
product of the stimulation and of the
process itself…
Because the perceptual process is not itself public or
directly observable (except to the perceiver himself,
whose percepts are given directly in experience), the
validity of perceptual theories can be checked only
indirectly. (Encyclopedia Britannica)
WHAT IS PERCEPTION?
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6. DOES LOVE CHANGE HOW WE SEE?
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Three types of context effects:
• Stimulus based context
• Perceiver based context
• Cultural context
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L11fQ6-QTIc

7. THE HALO EFFECT
• A cognitive bias in which an observer's
overall impression of a person or product
influences the observer's feelings and
thoughts about that entity's character or
properties.
• Named by psychologist Edward Thorndike in
reference to a person being perceived as
having a halo.

8. POSITIVELY BIASED?
http://how-she-fell.tumblr.com/post/41214199200
• Do positive illusions
inevitably breed
discontent?
• Or might idealization
actually promote
happiness?
• For instance, seeing
a partner's faults
through the rosy
filters provided by
one’s ideals might
minimize the
potential for conflict.

9. CONSTRUAL
LEVEL THEORY
• Distant events lead to abstract,
global and holistic processing
• More proximal events lead to
concrete, detail oriented, local
processing
• Tested with Navon task
• Love and lust differ with regard
to temporal perspective and
affect processing styles!
Trope, Y., & Liberman, N. (2011). Construal level theory.
Handbook of theories of social psychology, 118-134.
Förster, J., Özelsel, A., & Epstude, K. (2010). How love and lust change people’s
perception of relationship partners. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology,
46(2), 237-246.

10. LOVE AND CREATIVITY
Love and lust lead to different
ways of perceiving the world:
• Love inspires musings
about long-term outcomes
(having kids, growing old
together, etc.)
• Romantic love "usually
involves a long-terms goal
or desire of staying together
with a person ... and thus
contains a perspective on
the distant future.”
• Thoughts of sex tends to
focus the mind on the here
and now
Concepts of love and
lust are represented
cognitively in our
mental system and are
associated with specific
semantic associations,
expectancies,
behavioral
manifestations and
thinking processes.

11. • Global letter processing was
enhanced after love priming and
reduced after lust priming
• Lust might “blind” people from
perceiving the global features
while at the same time
enhancing processing of local
information
• Love may enhance global
processing without reducing
local processing
LOVE AND LUST PRIMING
Förster, J., Özelsel, A., & Epstude, K. (2010). How love and lust
change people’s perception of relationship partners. Journal of
Experimental Social Psychology, 46(2), 237-246.
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12. 12
LOVE IS NOT BLIND, BUT
PRESCIENT
• Intimates who idealized one another more
proved to be more prescient than blind.
• Idealization:
• Relationships persisted, satisfaction
increased, conflicts are averted, doubts
abated, and personal insecurities
diminished.
• >> Self-fulfilling prophecy!
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13. 13
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FINDINGS AND
FURTHER QUESTIONS
• Lasting security and confidence
appear to depend on intimates
seeing the best in one another
• Love boosts creativity,
Lust diminished it
• Love may enhance global
processing without reducing local
processing
• Carry-Over effects?
• Temporal perception?
• Is the visual recognition of objects
and color discrimination affected
by love/lust?

14. REFERENCES
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• Droit-Volet, S., & Meck, W. H. (2007). How emotions
colour our perception of time. Trends in cognitive
sciences, 11(12), 504-513.
• Förster, J., Özelsel, A., & Epstude, K. (2010). How
love and lust change people’s perception of
relationship partners. Journal of Experimental Social
Psychology, 46(2), 237-246.
• Hatfield, E., & Rapson, R. L. (1996). Love and sex:
Cross-cultural perspectives. Allyn & Bacon.
• Murray, S. L., Holmes, J. G., & Griffin, D. W. (1996).
The self-fulfilling nature of positive illusions in
romantic relationships: love is not blind, but prescient.
Journal of personality and social psychology, 71(6),
1155.
• Trope, Y., & Liberman, N. (2011). Construal level
theory. Handbook of theories of social psychology,
118-134.

15. J e a n n a . n i k o l o v @ g m a i l . c o m
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THANK YOU!
Questions?
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