Perception of human motion in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic

• Autor(a) principal: Lameirinha, Inês Rodrigues
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10773/31728
• topic: Human motion; Point light walkers; COVID-19; Vulnerability to disease; Facing the viewer bias; Behavioral imunne system

The behavioral immune system (BIS) facilitates the recognition of pathogen sources and encourages avoidance behaviors. This system is strongly influenced by people’s appearance, individual differences, like in vulnerability to disease and general trust, and situational demands such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Given its relevance as a public health hazard, this pandemic context, in particular, may influence the BIS to be hypersensitive and hyperreactive to any cue linked to COVID-19, including surgical masks. Thus, these particular stimuli could modulate our perception of others and, consequently, how we behave in a social interaction.The present study aimed to understand if infection-connoting stimuli linked to the context of the global COVID-19 pandemic can influence people’s perception of biological movement, investigated through the point-light technique. Participants were shown photos of faces with or without surgical masks, followed by an ambiguous point light walker (PLW), and asked to indicate the direction in which the PLW was moving (approaching or receding). Results showed that the facing the viewer bias (FTV) - the tendency to perceive a PLW as approaching more often than as receding - was not significantly different between conditions. Interestingly, further correlational analysis suggested that individual differences, particularly perceived vulnerablity to disease, seem to modulate how the bias operates between conditions (mask vs. no mask). Results also showed that faces with surgical masks were perceived as safer to interact with than faces without these masks. Findings from the present study may have implications for policy and public responses to future epidemics or pandemics, highlithing the importance of individual differences as an important cue that should not be overlooked when in the process of evaluating and reformulating social policies.