Lisa K. Libby

Picture Yourself at the Polls: Visual Perspective in Mental Imagery Affects Self-Perception and Behavior

The present research demonstrates that the visual perspective—own first-person versus observers third-person—people use to picture themselves engaging in a potential future action affects their self-perceptions and subsequent behavior. On the eve of the 2004 U.S. presidential election, registered voters in Ohio were instructed to use either the first-person or the third-person perspective to picture themselves voting in the election. Picturing voting from the third-person perspective caused subjects to adopt a stronger pro-voting mind-set correspondent with the imagined behavior. Further, this effect on self-perception carried over to behavior, causing subjects who were instructed to picture voting from the third-person perspective to be significantly more likely to vote in the election. These findings extend previous research in autobiographical memory and social judgment linking the observers perspective with dispositional attributions, and demonstrate the causal role of imagery in determining future behavior.

Seeing meaning in action: A bidirectional link between visual perspective and action identification level

Actions do not have inherent meaning but rather can be interpreted in many ways. The interpretation a person adopts has important effects on a range of higher order cognitive processes. One dimension on which interpretations can vary is the extent to which actions are identified abstractly--in relation to broader goals, personal characteristics, or consequences--versus concretely, in terms of component processes. The present research investigated how visual perspective (own 1st-person vs. observers 3rd-person) in action imagery is related to action identification level. A series of experiments measured and manipulated visual perspective in mental and photographic images to test the connection with action identification level. Results revealed a bidirectional causal relationship linking 3rd-person images and abstract action identifications. These findings highlight the functional role of visual imagery and have implications for understanding how perspective is involved in action perception at the social, cognitive, and neural levels.

Visual Perspective in Mental Imagery: A Representational Tool that Functions in Judgment, Emotion, and Self-Insight

Visual imagery plays a prominent role in mental simulations of past and future events: people tend to “see” events in their minds eye when they think about them. When picturing events people often use their own first-person perspective, looking out at the situation through their own eyes. However, other times people use a third-person perspective, so that they see themselves in the image from the visual perspective an observer would have. This chapter presents a theoretical model proposing that imagery perspective functions to determine whether people understand events bottom-up, in terms of the phenomenology evoked by concrete features of the pictured situation (first-person), or top-down, in terms of abstractions that integrate the pictured event with its broader context (third-person). This model integrates existing findings and generates novel predictions that challenge widespread assumptions about the function that imagery perspective serves. We review a program of research that supports these predictions, demonstrating the role of imagery perspective in defining the experiential and conceptual facets of the self, determining emotional responses to recalled and imagined life events, and shaping forecasts of future behavior and emotion. We conclude by discussing how the proposed model helps to distinguish the visual dimension of perspective from other dimensions on which perspective may vary. We consider how this model connects with other theories concerning the self and event representation, and we explore the implications for classic and contemporary areas of social psychological inquiry including attribution, social perspective-taking, culture, emotional coping, and top-down versus bottom-up processing.Abstract Visual imagery plays a prominent role in mental simulations of past and future events: people tend to “see” events in their minds eye when they think about them. When picturing events people often use their own first-person perspective, looking out at the situation through their own eyes. However, other times people use a third-person perspective, so that they see themselves in the image from the visual perspective an observer would have. This chapter presents a theoretical model proposing that imagery perspective functions to determine whether people understand events bottom-up, in terms of the phenomenology evoked by concrete features of the pictured situation (first-person), or top-down, in terms of abstractions that integrate the pictured event with its broader context (third-person). This model integrates existing findings and generates novel predictions that challenge widespread assumptions about the function that imagery perspective serves. We review a program of research that supports these predictions, demonstrating the role of imagery perspective in defining the experiential and conceptual facets of the self, determining emotional responses to recalled and imagined life events, and shaping forecasts of future behavior and emotion. We conclude by discussing how the proposed model helps to distinguish the visual dimension of perspective from other dimensions on which perspective may vary. We consider how this model connects with other theories concerning the self and event representation, and we explore the implications for classic and contemporary areas of social psychological inquiry including attribution, social perspective-taking, culture, emotional coping, and top-down versus bottom-up processing.

Chapter four - Visual Perspective in Mental Imagery: A Representational Tool that Functions in Judgment, Emotion, and Self-Insight

Visual imagery plays a prominent role in mental simulations of past and future events: people tend to “see” events in their minds eye when they think about them. When picturing events people often use their own first-person perspective, looking out at the situation through their own eyes. However, other times people use a third-person perspective, so that they see themselves in the image from the visual perspective an observer would have. This chapter presents a theoretical model proposing that imagery perspective functions to determine whether people understand events bottom-up, in terms of the phenomenology evoked by concrete features of the pictured situation (first-person), or top-down, in terms of abstractions that integrate the pictured event with its broader context (third-person). This model integrates existing findings and generates novel predictions that challenge widespread assumptions about the function that imagery perspective serves. We review a program of research that supports these predictions, demonstrating the role of imagery perspective in defining the experiential and conceptual facets of the self, determining emotional responses to recalled and imagined life events, and shaping forecasts of future behavior and emotion. We conclude by discussing how the proposed model helps to distinguish the visual dimension of perspective from other dimensions on which perspective may vary. We consider how this model connects with other theories concerning the self and event representation, and we explore the implications for classic and contemporary areas of social psychological inquiry including attribution, social perspective-taking, culture, emotional coping, and top-down versus bottom-up processing.Abstract Visual imagery plays a prominent role in mental simulations of past and future events: people tend to “see” events in their minds eye when they think about them. When picturing events people often use their own first-person perspective, looking out at the situation through their own eyes. However, other times people use a third-person perspective, so that they see themselves in the image from the visual perspective an observer would have. This chapter presents a theoretical model proposing that imagery perspective functions to determine whether people understand events bottom-up, in terms of the phenomenology evoked by concrete features of the pictured situation (first-person), or top-down, in terms of abstractions that integrate the pictured event with its broader context (third-person). This model integrates existing findings and generates novel predictions that challenge widespread assumptions about the function that imagery perspective serves. We review a program of research that supports these predictions, demonstrating the role of imagery perspective in defining the experiential and conceptual facets of the self, determining emotional responses to recalled and imagined life events, and shaping forecasts of future behavior and emotion. We conclude by discussing how the proposed model helps to distinguish the visual dimension of perspective from other dimensions on which perspective may vary. We consider how this model connects with other theories concerning the self and event representation, and we explore the implications for classic and contemporary areas of social psychological inquiry including attribution, social perspective-taking, culture, emotional coping, and top-down versus bottom-up processing.

Imagery perspective and source monitoring in imagination inflation

The present experiments suggest that imagery perspective—first person (own) versus third person (observer’s)—influences source-monitoring judgments. Imagination inflation (Garry, Manning, Loftus, & Sherman, 1996) occurs when imaginary experience with events is mistaken for real experience. In Experiment 1, the perspective used to visualize real past events depended on memory test wording (“remember doing?” vs. “happened to you?”). Experiment 2 manipulated the perspective used to visually imagine counterfactual events and showed that the effect on imagination inflation depended on memory test wording. Imagination inflation was most likely when memory test wording encouraged participants to visualize real events from the same perspective as they had used to imagine counterfactual ones. Imagination inflation may result not simply from having created imaginary representations of events, but also from having created representations that match the decision criteria used in source monitoring.

Seeing Failure in Your Life: Imagery Perspective Determines Whether Self-Esteem Shapes Reactions to Recalled and Imagined Failure

The present research reveals that when it comes to recalling and imagining failure in ones life, changing how one looks at the event can change its impact on well-being; however, the nature of the effect depends on an aspect of ones self-concept, namely, self-esteem. Five studies measured or manipulated the visual perspective (internal first-person vs. external third-person) individuals used to mentally image recalled or imagined personal failures. It has been proposed that imagery perspective determines whether peoples reactions to an event are shaped bottom-up by concrete features of the event (first-person) or top-down by their self-concept (third-person; L. K. Libby & R. P. Eibach, 2011b). Evidence suggests that differences in the self-concepts of individuals with low and high self-esteem (LSEs and HSEs) are responsible for self-esteem differences in reaction to failure, leading LSEs to have more negative thoughts and feelings about themselves (e.g., M. H. Kernis, J. Brockner, & B. S. Frankel, 1989). Thus, the authors predicted, and found, that low self-esteem was associated with greater overgeneralization--operationalized as negativity in accessible self-knowledge and feelings of shame--only when participants had pictured failure from the third-person perspective and not from the first-person. Further, picturing failure from the third-person, rather than first-person, perspective, increased shame and the negativity of accessible knowledge among LSEs, whereas it decreased shame among HSEs. Results help to distinguish between different theoretical accounts of how imagery perspective functions and have implications for the study of top-down and bottom-up influences on self-judgment and emotion, as well as for the role of perspective and abstraction in coping.

Structure and strategy in the associative false memory paradigm

List-learning experiments can have several levels of structure: individual words, the gist (if any) of each list, and the task in which those lists are embedded. The usual presentation of the DRM associative paradigm (Deese, 1959; Roediger & McDermott, 1995) strongly encourages a focus on gist and produces a high rate of false recall of key words (FRK). The experiments reported here were designed to invite the use of memory strategies based on structures other than the gist and thus reduce FRK. The crucial condition of Experiment 1, short lists followed by rehearsal, encouraged a focus on individual words and produced a low rate of FRK. In Experiment 2, the lists were embedded in a guessing game, which virtually eliminated FRK. FRK was also low in Experiments 3a and 3b when participants engaged in a complex task involving the first letters of list words. The relevance of these findings to false memories in the DRM and the connection of false autobiographical memories is discussed.

Self-Enhancement or Self-Coherence? Why People Shift Visual Perspective in Mental Images of the Personal Past and Future

It is often assumed, by laypeople and researchers alike, that people shift visual perspective in mental images of life events to maintain a positive self-concept by claiming ownership of desirable events (first-person) and disowning undesirable events (third-person). The present research suggests that people shift perspective not according to the pictured event’s desirability but according to whether they focus on the experience of the event (first-person) or on the event’s coherence with the self-concept (third-person). This explains why self-change promotes third-person imagery of prechange selves (Studies 1 and 2). And, the same mechanism determines perspective apart from self-change, in both memory and imagination (Studies 3 and 4). By demonstrating that people shift perspective according to whether they focus on the experience of an event or its self-concept coherence, these results suggest how perspective may function more broadly in social cognition, and specifically in the construction and maintenance of the temporally extended self.

Changing Visual Perspective Changes Processing Style: A Distinct Pathway by Which Imagery Guides Cognition

Action images can be depicted either from the actors first-person or an observers third-person visual perspective. This research demonstrates that visual perspective of action imagery influences the extent to which people process actions abstractly. Two experiments presented photographs of everyday actions, manipulating their visual perspective (first-person vs. third-person), holding constant the scope and objects depicted. Subsequently, participants interpreted actions unrelated to the images. Across both experiments, viewing third-person (vs. first-person) photographs caused participants to construe the unrelated actions more abstractly. This carryover effect demonstrates a shift in processing style, sheds light on an underlying mechanism of perspective effects, and suggests that imagery is a more versatile cognitive tool than traditionally assumed.

Framing memories of relationship transgressions How visual imagery perspective activates relational knowledge

How people interpret the meaning of minor relationship transgressions can impact broader relationship well-being. It is proposed that picturing relationship transgressions from a third-person (vs. first-person) visual perspective prompts people to think of them in the context of their chronic relationship beliefs and goals. In doing so, individuals who are relatively anxious about their relationships become more insecure, whereas less anxious individuals find reassurance. In Study 1 participants pictured a transgression they committed against their partner. Individuals high in attachment anxiety made less positive evaluations of their relationships when picturing the event using a third-person rather than first-person perspective. Similar results were found when participants recalled transgressions committed by their partners against them (Study 2). These results have implications for understanding how partners move forward in their relationships after transgressions.