Big Brother Camera Surveillance Changes Visual Perception
December 18th, 2024Via: Study Finds:
The results were remarkable: “Our surveilled participants became hyper-aware of face stimuli almost a second faster than the control group. This perceptual enhancement also occurred without participants realizing it,” says Seymour. This held true whether the faces were looking directly at them or away, though both groups detected direct-gazing faces more quickly overall.
This heightened awareness appears to tap into ancient survival mechanisms. “It’s a mechanism that evolved for us to detect other agents and potential threats in our environment, such as predators and other humans, and it seems to be enhanced when we’re being watched on CCTV,” Seymour explains.
Importantly, this wasn’t simply due to participants trying harder or being more alert under surveillance. When the researchers ran the same experiment using simple geometric patterns instead of faces, there was no difference between the watched and unwatched groups. The enhancement was specific to social stimuli – faces – suggesting that surveillance taps into fundamental neural circuits evolved for processing social information.
