I’m working on a unique experimental design to explore non-visual affective perception.
The concept: participants are blindfolded and guided into different rooms, each filled with a specific emotional theme (e.g., happy imagery, religious icons, violent crime photos, demonic art, and a blank control room). They can’t see anything—no sensory cues—but are asked to rate the emotional “vibe” they felt in each room on a scale.
It’s meant to test whether people can subconsciously sense emotional atmospheres based solely on the space’s content, even without seeing or hearing anything.
Has anything like this been done before? Would love thoughts on methodology, controls, or any researchers who’ve explored this sort of phenomenon.
Comments
To “subconsciously sense emotional atmospheres” surely they’d need information for their subconscious to process? I don’t understand what you’re trying to measure.
Also, there’s no consensus for how people respond to many of the themes you listed.
There are plenty of studies on sensory deprivation, which is effectively what you’re describing.
The whole “vibe” thing you’re talking about isn’t very useful, but if you really want to do this I would actually suggest doing the opposite of what you plan. Put people in a blank room but you tell them beforehand that they’re sitting in a room with pictures of puppies, but then you get the same person and do it again and tell them they’re now in a room with pictures of war atrocities. Except there were never any pictures and they’re just mentally projecting and manifesting the whole “vibe” thing. If they “sense a change in vibe” you can obverse that preexisting knowledge impacts latter “vibes” irrelevant on what’s in that space.