See what you want to see: Motivational influences on visual perception.

2006/10/01 by Emily Balcetis, David Dunning · 5 citations
Neuroscience · Psychology · #Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies #Visual perception and processing mechanisms #Face Recognition and Perception #Preconscious #Psychology #Perception #Cognitive psychology #Social psychology #Information processing #Stimulus (psychology) #Visual processing #Visual perception #Eye tracking #Unconscious mind

paper · doi:10.1037/0022-3514.91.4.612

openalex publication_date 2006/10/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/25

Abstract

People's motivational states--their wishes and preferences--influence their processing of visual stimuli. In 5 studies, participants shown an ambiguous figure (e.g., one that could be seen either as the letter B or the number 13) tended to report seeing the interpretation that assigned them to outcomes they favored. This finding was affirmed by unobtrusive and implicit measures of perception (e.g., eye tracking, lexical decision tasks) and by experimental procedures demonstrating that participants were aware only of the single (usually favored) interpretation they saw at the time they viewed the stimulus. These studies suggest that the impact of motivation on information processing extends down into preconscious processing of stimuli in the visual environment and thus guides what the visual system presents to conscious awareness.

Citations

• Perceptual Identification and Perceptual Organization
• Prejudice as self-image maintenance: Affirming the self through derogating others.
• Tracking the Time Course of Spoken Word Recognition Using Eye Movements: Evidence for Continuous Mapping Models
• Motivated Reasoning and Performance on the was on Selection Task
• Gorillas in Our Midst: Sustained Inattentional Blindness for Dynamic Events
• Motivated skepticism: Use of differential decision criteria for preferred and nonpreferred conclusions.
• Thirst Modulates a Perception
• The case for motivated reasoning.

Cited by

• Cognitive Dissonance and the Perception of Natural Environments
• Seeing the Expected, the Desired, and the Feared: Influences on Perceptual Interpretation and Directed Attention
• Perceiving and desiring: a new look at the cognitive penetrability of experience
• Hierarchy in the eye of the beholder: (Anti-)egalitarianism shapes perceived levels of social inequality.
• Wishful thinking [wikipedia]