CLLAM: Joulia Smortchkova: (Grenoble)

First impressions and affect

Seminarium

Datum:

fredag 4 april 2025

Tid:

10.00 – 12.00

Plats:

Zoom

Abstract

It has been recently argued that there is an affective aspect to perception. The intuitive claim is that, alongside sensory properties such as shapes, colors, orientations, we also perceptually experience affective valences. The relation between perception and affective valence is debated, however.

Is affective valence a phenomenal quality of perceptual experiences? Is it represented in perceptual content on the model of the rich perceptual content view? Or is it rather a distinctive form of perceptual attitude?

In my talk I will use the case study of first impressions, the phenomenon of vividly experiencing something for the first time, to suggest that the affective aspect of perception might be multi-level: both as a feature of perceptual experience and as a metacognitive feature of perceptual processing. The multi-level hypothesis can explain cases of affectively conflicting perceptual first impressions as well as how the affective tone of perception changes over time.