Professor Atsushi Sato of the University of Toyama and Ai Matsuo, a researcher at The Open University of Japan, in cooperation with Professor Michiteru Kitazaki of Toyohashi University of Technology have found that social contingency modulates one's perceptual representation of the environment. Volunteer participants who were given the ability to display an image of a smiling person with the press of a button were found to perceive an afterimage of the same person, but with a neutral expression, to be smaller than participants who were unable to display the image of a smiling person with the press of a button. Thus, when the participant's intentional action affects the other's reaction, the perceptual distance between self and other will shorten.
* This article was originally published here
