The Psychology of Nakedness

[n2doc]

By Jonah Lehrer November 30, 2011 | 11:37 am | Categories: Frontal Cortex, Science Blogs
The human mind sees minds everywhere. Show us a collection of bouncing balls and we hallucinate agency; a glance at a stuffed animal and we endow it with a mood; I’m convinced Siri doesn’t like me. The point is that we are constantly translating our visual perceptions into a theory of mind, as we attempt to imagine the internal states of teddy bears, microchips and perfect strangers.

Most of the time, this approach works well enough. If I notice someone squinting their eyes and clenching their jaw, I automatically conclude that he must be angry; if she flexes the zygomatic major – that’s what happens during a smile – then I assume she’s happy. The point is that a few cues of body language are instantly translated into a rich mental image. We can’t help but think about what other people are thinking about.

But this intricate connection between mind theorizing and sensory perception can also prove problematic. For instance, when people glance at strangers who look “different” – perhaps they dress funny, or belong to a different ethic group – they endow these strangers with less agency, a fancy term for the ability to plan, act and exert self-control. Or consider a 2010 fMRI experiment that found that when men glance at “sexualized” women they exhibit reduced activation in parts of the brain typically associated with the attribution of mental states. These are obviously terrible habits – a hint of cleavage shouldn’t make us care less about someone’s feelings, nor should a different skin tone – but we mostly can’t help it. We judge books by the cover and minds by their appearance. We are a superficial species.

And this brings me to a fascinating new paper by an all star team of psychologists, including Kurt Gray, Joshua Knobe, Mark Sheskin, Paul Bloom and Lisa Feldman Barrett. The scientists nicely frame the mystery they want to solve:

Do people’s mental capacities fundamentally change when they remove a sweater? This seems absurd: How could removing a piece of clothing change one’s capacity for acting or feeling? In six studies, however, we show that taking off a sweater—or otherwise revealing flesh—can significantly change the way a mind is perceived. In this article, we suggest that the kind of mind ascribed to another person depends on the relative salience of his or her body—that the perceived capacity for both pain and planned action depends on whether someone wears a sweater or tank-top.


more
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/11/the-psychology-of-nakedness/

[izquierdista]

1. Why Mr. Rogers changes his shoes...

...and puts on his sweater. To make the little tykes feel at home watching his show. You don't do those things unless you are at home.

[Odin2005]

2. I agree with the comments of the article criticizing this study.

The very first commenter hits the nail on the head, IMO:

After seeing the photos it seems like the test wasn't giving any information about clothed vs unclothed. It could be a contextual assumption. When asked to judge Erin, we don't just think "omg skin", we think, "What kind of person models in a bikini? And she looks like she's enjoying it" (although she is a model and was paid to look that way).

It could also be saying a lot about how we perceive people at different distances - the top photos are merely cropped, but the perception is that we are physically closer to the person, at a distance where their face would fill our vision. At that distance, we are generally conversing, so we have to turn on the parts of our brains that understand the other person as a thinking being. At a distance where we can see most of their bodies, we have to rely more on body language, which is only particularly good at conveying feeling.

I think the study is flawed, the conclusions are flawed, and the article is especially flawed. Although it is all very interesting.

[lonestarnot]

3. Nevermind. Figured it out from context of the article.