magazine issue 4 2014 / Issue 20

Seeing mountains in molehills: Embodied visual perception of the environment

• written by Shana Cole & Emily Balcetis
• edited by Simone Schnall

Such research may provide important insights into how people are able to persevere when their physical resources are scarce.  As any runner, rock climber, or cross country skier can attest, energy does not come solely from the body. In addition to physical resources, people’s mental resources influence their ability to take on difficult tasks. Consider the New York City Marathon. On the morning of the race, tens of thousands of runners stand at the entrance to the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in Staten Island and gear up for the 26.2 miles (about 42 km) ahead of them. As the runners weave their way through the five boroughs of the city, they face physical and mental challenges. The most formidable of those challenges occurs for many runners at about mile 20 (about 30 km). It is around this time in the race, as they cross the Willis Avenue Bridge and head into the Bronx, that many runners hit “the wall.” Physiological cues such as exhaustion, dehydration, and severe muscle fatigue suggest the runner’s physical energy is nearly spent. And it nearly is. The average human body can only store about 18-20 miles’ worth of energy-producing glycogen, and runners at that point have quite literally run out of fuel (Latta, 2003). In spite of that, many marathoners are able to push through and continue their run. At the last NYC marathon in 2011, 99 percent of runners—47,340 out of the 47,763 who started—crossed the finish line.           

How do people continue on when their physical resources are spent? As 1980 Boston Marathon winner Jacqueline Gareau said “The body does not want you to do this. As you run, it tells you to stop. But the mind must be strong. It is not age; it is not diet. It is the will to succeed” (Luff, 2013). Psychological states can be powerful determinants of people’s ability to take on physical tasks. A comprehensive analysis of Olympic athletes found that what distinguishes winning Olympic athletes from losing ones is not only differences in physical preparation and prowess but also, and sometimes even more so, differences in psychological qualities such as confidence, commitment, and motivation (Greenleaf, Gould, & Dieffenbach, 2001). Motivation and drive can lead to feelings that one is energized, and can even increase cardiovascular responses associated with gearing up for action. For example, when people are motivated to take on challenging tasks, systolic blood pressure—a marker of the body’s readiness to act—increases (Gendolla & Richter, 2005; Wright, 1996). Psychological factors can act as sources of energy as people engage in activity in the world around them. Just like for the marathoners struggling against extreme fatigue and facing “the wall,” psychological resources and willpower are particularly important when people are tired or physical resources are nearly spent. One way people may overcome exhaustion and resist the urge to quit is by seeing the world as easier to traverse, a visual “trick” that can occur when people are highly motivated.

In one study, we how physical and mental resources interact to influence perceptions. Specifically, we tested people’s perceptions of distance to a finish line as a function of both their physical fitness and the strength of their motivation to make it there (Cole, Balcetis, & Zhang, 2013). We first measured waist-to-hip ratios to gauge people’s physical states; people with higher waist-to-hip ratios are generally less physically fit. Then participants learned they would perform a difficult physical task we referred to as a weighted walking test. In the task, participants had to wear heavy ankle weights while walking quickly to a finish line with a challenging gait. For unfit participants, just like marathon runners at the point of exhaustion, the demands of the task may seem to outweigh the physical resources they have at their disposal.

We then manipulated how motivated participants would be to perform the task. Specifically, we told half of participants they had done poorly on a series of initial fitness tests and so to be considered physically fit they had to perform well on the weighted walking test. Unsurprisingly, these participants reported being very motivated to ace the last test to demonstrate their fitness. We told the other half of participants that they had performed well in the first tests and their performance on the weighted walking test would do little to affect their overall score, as they were already deemed physically fit. These participants reported feeling rather unmotivated to do well since they had already demonstrated their superior fitness. We measured perception and found that among participants who were physically unfit but psychologically motivated, the distance seemed short. In fact, it seemed just as short as it did for people who were actually fit. Strong motivations seemed to trump deficient physical resources, giving people the impression that their environment was easier to traverse.

This led us to ask if feeling energized impacts perceptions of the environment in the same way that being physically energized does. Perhaps when people are motivated they feel psychologically energized, and just as do sugary beverages or physical virility, it affects the way people see the world.