Following Other People’s Footsteps: A Contextual-Attraction Effect Induced by Biological Motion
研究发现，当观察者判断中央行走者的方向时，会受到周围行走者方向的吸引，这种环境吸引效应在性别和速度不同时仍存在，但异步呈现或非生物运动时消失，表明社会联系对视觉感知有特殊影响。
Our visual system is bombarded with numerous social interactions that form intangible social bonds among people, as exemplified by synchronized walking in crowds. Here, we investigated whether these perceived social bonds implicitly intrude on visual perception and induce a contextual effect. Using multiple point-light walkers and a classical contextual paradigm, we tested 72 college-age adults across six experiments and found that the perceived direction of the central walker was attracted toward the direction of the surrounding walkers. The observed contextual-attraction effect occurred even when the surrounding walkers differed from the central walker in gender and walking speed but disappeared when they were asynchronously presented or replaced by inanimate motion. Strikingly, this contextual-attraction effect partially persisted in the context of local motion rather than static figures. These findings, in contrast to the typical contextual-repulsion effect, lend support for the distinctiveness of perceived social bonds on contextual modulation and suggest a specialized contextual mechanism tuned to social factors.