Expecting to lift a box together makes the load look lighter

The action abilities of an individual observer modulate his or her perception of spatial properties of the environment and of objects. The present study investigated how joint action abilities shape perception. Four experiments examined how the intention to lift an object with another individual affects perceived weight. In Experiments 1, 2a, and 2b, participants judged the perceived weight of boxes while expecting to lift them either alone or with a co-actor. In Experiment 3, the co-actor was healthy or injured. Participants intending to lift a box with a co-actor perceived the box as lighter than participants intending to lift the same box alone, provided that the co-actor appeared healthy and therefore capable of helping. These findings suggest that anticipated effort modulates the perception of object properties in the context of joint action. We discuss implications for the role of action prediction and action simulation processes in social interaction.

• Publication year

  2011

• Venue

  Psychological Research

• Publication date

  2011-12-09

• Fields of study

  Medicine, Psychology

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1007/s00426-011-0398-4PMID 22159762PMCID 3383959
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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