Socio-spatial isomorphism

Space perception;

MacBride, S. J. C. ; Lee, T. R. ; Lee, T. R.

University:University of St Andrews

Department:Psychology & Neuroscience (School of)

关键词: Space perception;   

Others  :  https://research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/10023/2894/SJCMacBridePhDThesis.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y

来源: DR-NTU

【 摘 要 】

It is contended that space can act as a metaphor for social relationships. Thethesis draws on schema theory from cognitive psychology to explain how theaffective qualities of social stimuli serve to bias the 'cognitive maps' of individuals.Supporting evidence is cited from the fields of cognitive, social, environmental andneuro-psychology.The metaphor is tested experimentally from a micro-spatial level (e. g. spatiallocations of characters in a photograph) up to a macro-spatial level (spatiallocations of towns). The affective valence of the stimuli used were either a prioribased (e. g. homes of people already known to the subject, perceived religiouspredominance of towns in a sectarian setting) or influenced by the experimenter(e. g. captions purporting to inform representations of social scenes in photographsderived from newspapers and magazines).Distortion of perceived distances (between subject and stimuli and between stimuli)form the dependent variable in each experiment.Results in all experiments indicated a strong tendency for the valence of stimuli tobias people in their distance estimations. Relative overestimation of distance wasobserved for stimuli perceived to be negatively valenced and the reverse for thosestimuli perceived to be positively valenced. In a final experiment, distanceestimations were examined between a variety of human figures photographed in'real-world' social encounters. The results were in line with Social Identity Theory,with overestimation observed between groups and underestimation within groups.Results throughout are interpreted in relation to the 'socio-spatial schema'metaphor.