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 Posted: Tue, 16th Aug 2005 21:46 Post subject: Porn makes you blind: official |
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Porn makes you blind: official
By Lester Haines (lester.haines at theregister.co.uk)
Published Tuesday 16th August 2005 09:53 GMT
A Vanderbilt University research squad has illustrated what the Victorians and Mary Whitehouse knew all along: that smut sends you blind, albeit temporarily. The same apparently applies to blood and guts images, although of course eyeballing snaps of carnage does not carry the same penalty of eternal damnation as ogling smut.
Vanderbilt Uni psychologist David Zald and his team exposed guinea pigs to a barrage of "disturbing" images interspersed with landscape or architectural snaps, telling them to scan the images for a certain target image. The press release explains: "An irrelevant, emotionally negative or neutral picture preceded the target by two to eight items. The closer the negative pictures were to the target image, the more frequently the subject failed to spot the target. In a subsequent study, which has not yet been published, the researchers substituted erotic for negative images and found the same basic effect."
The bottom line is, says Zald: "We observed that people fail to detect visual images that appeared one-fifth of a second after emotional images, whereas they can detect those images with little problem after neutral images."
So, what's it all about? Well, the boffins reckon it's related to the "rubbernecking" concept - the process whereby you try and drive by an accident without having a shufti but "our emotions of concern, fear and curiosity cause us to stare out the window at the accident and slow to a crawl as we drive by".
We suppose that the same process is at work when you attempt to motor past an attractive member of the opposite/same sex (according to taste) and not cop an eyeful, fail dismally and pile into the back of the police car sitting at a zebra crossing.
Or that's what we think they're talking about, ie, a strong visual or emotional stimulus temporarily disables your faculties. The Vanderbilt blurb notes that previous studies have demonstrated "there are limits to how much information we can hold in our visual short-term memory and that we often miss visual images that pass right before our eyes if we are paying attention to something else".
Zald explains: "We think that there is essentially a bottleneck for information processing and if a certain type of stimulus captures attention, it can basically jam up that bottleneck so subsequent information can't get through. It appears to happen involuntarily."
And there's more: an individual's ability to control his or her attention was "directly linked to the aspect of their personalities that involves their reaction to negative or frightening stimuli, assessed by using a scale that measured their levels of harm avoidance".*
In other words, "fearful or cautious" people have more trouble disengaging from emotional images, while those with a higher devil-may-care quotient "are more often carefree and more comfortable in dangerous or difficult situations".
Presumably, then, only those with a healthy disregard for danger should attempt to drive past a particularly nasty multiple pile-up while flicking though a copy of Playboy. As for the rest of us, it's eyes firmly fixed forward and Miss October back on the top shelf where she belongs. ®
Bootnote
*For the record, here's how the Vanderbilt team probed their subjects for "harm avoidance" or otherwise. There's more information available at the dedicated Vanderbilt website (http://www.exploration.vanderbilt.edu/news/news_rubberneck.htm).
In the second experiment, the researchers sought to determine if individuals can override their emotion-induced blindness by focusing more deliberately on the target for which they are searching. In this experiment, the subjects undertook two different trials. In one they were told specifically to look for a rotated photo of a building; in the other they were told to look for a rotated photo of either a building or a landscape.
The research team hypothesized that the more specific instruction - to look for the building only - would help the research subjects override their emotion-induced blindness. After running the tests, the researchers discovered that they were partially right: specific instructions helped some subjects control their attention, but it didn't help others.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/08/16/emotion_induced_blindness/print.html
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nouseforaname
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Posts: 21306
Location: Toronto, Canada
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| Posted: Tue, 16th Aug 2005 22:06 Post subject: |
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Well this is pretty stupid scientific research. Of course when you see a picture of a fucked up head you go "ugh" and want to look away but u find urself trying to get a better look. When you see a chair u see a chair and just move on... nothing new here. Neway I bet if they let the guinea pigs (who i assume are people  ) see the images for a while beforehand and then 'inserted' the object they need to find, the results would be more accurate and I bet there wouldnt be a consistant pattern forming 
With 'shocking' images there's obviously a delay because sub-consciously the mind would return to a state of complete rest + focus.
Damnit why do scientists spend so much time + money analysing bullshit which has no purpose and is pretty much common sense (I haven't done any tests but I know im right )
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SycoShaman
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Posts: 24468
Location: Toronto, Canada
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| Posted: Tue, 16th Aug 2005 22:28 Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | Damnit why do scientists spend so much time + money analysing bullshit which has no purpose and is pretty much common sense (I haven't done any tests but I know im right |
Fuck, for real....so many useless studies...why not put that money to something relevant..like aids or cancer research? |
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Mutantius
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Location: In Elektro looking for beans
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SycoShaman
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Posts: 24468
Location: Toronto, Canada
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| Posted: Tue, 16th Aug 2005 22:37 Post subject: |
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| Mutantius wrote: | | So thats why I needed glasses in the 8th grade |
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Lutzifer
Modzilla
Posts: 12740
Location: ____________________ **** vegan zombie **** GRRAAIIINNSS _______
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| Posted: Wed, 17th Aug 2005 01:37 Post subject: |
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| SycoShaman wrote: | | Quote: | | Damnit why do scientists spend so much time + money analysing bullshit which has no purpose and is pretty much common sense (I haven't done any tests but I know im right |
Fuck, for real....so many useless studies...why not put that money to something relevant..like aids or cancer research? |
i m so glad, that scientific funding is still done by people with more reasoning. Although sometimes only by a small margin... |
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| Posted: Wed, 17th Aug 2005 02:28 Post subject: |
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| Sublime wrote: | | Neway I bet if they let the guinea pigs (who i assume are people ) |
 damnit people how stupid can you get? |
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| Posted: Wed, 17th Aug 2005 02:36 Post subject: |
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There is nothing wrong in giving a scientific basis to a commonly held belief. Although I cannot see any beneficiaries to this line of research other than spin doctors and advertisers.
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fisk
Posts: 9145
Location: Von Oben
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| Posted: Wed, 17th Aug 2005 02:37 Post subject: |
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At least they make any effort, most people here only read these fucking forums and go wank.
Yes, yes I'm back.
Somewhat.
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| Posted: Wed, 17th Aug 2005 02:47 Post subject: |
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such as yourself, I presume?
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fisk
Posts: 9145
Location: Von Oben
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| Posted: Wed, 17th Aug 2005 02:49 Post subject: |
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Why are you presuming that?
Yes, yes I'm back.
Somewhat.
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| Posted: Wed, 17th Aug 2005 03:22 Post subject: |
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| Posted: Wed, 17th Aug 2005 03:58 Post subject: |
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| Posted: Thu, 18th Aug 2005 07:36 Post subject: |
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prolly some sucker tryin to get his doctor title the quick way.
hmm, the effect of german scheisse-porn on hamsters...why not.
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SycoShaman
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Location: Toronto, Canada
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| Posted: Thu, 18th Aug 2005 13:34 Post subject: |
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| D_A_Kuja wrote: | prolly some sucker tryin to get his doctor title the quick way.
hmm, the effect of german scheisse-porn on hamsters...why not. |
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