Open and empathic personalities see two things at the same time: the relationship of big-five personality traits and cognitive empathy with mixed percepts during binocular rivalry

Mika Koivisto,Maija Virkkala,Jetta Aarnio,Mika Puustinen

doi:10.1007/s12144-021-02249-7

Abstract

Does our personality predict what we see? This question was studied in 100 university students with binocular rivalry paradigm by presenting incompatible images to each eye, allowing multiple interpretations of the same sensory input. During continuous binocular presentation, dominance of perception starts to fluctuate between the images. When neither of the images is fully suppressed, the two images combine into mixed percepts. We focused on the link between mixed percepts, big-five traits, and empathy. The results revealed that openness and agreeableness correlated with the occurrence of mixed percepts after the first dominant perception. However, these correlations of openness and agreeableness were mediated by cognitive empathy. In addition, openness had a direct association with reporting the initial percept in the onset of stimulation as a mixed percept, suggesting a mechanism that is separate from the one mediated by cognitive empathy. Overall, the results provide preliminary evidence suggesting that personality predicts what we see. Such individual differences in perceptual interpretations may be linked to both higher level cognitive mechanisms as well as lower level visual mechanisms.

Highlights

Binocular rivalry occurs when two sufficiently different images are presented simultaneously to each eye: the observer does not usually see them both at the same time but the images compete for access to consciousness (Blake, 2001)
Cognitive Empathy correlated with the same variables as Openness did, as well as it had a negative correlation with Dominance duration. These analyses showed that Openness and Cognitive empathy are related to the occurrence of mixed percepts
The Average Causal Mediation Effect (ACME) was significant, β = .105, 95% CI [.029, .19], p = .004, the analysis shows that Cognitive Empathy mediated the effect of Openness on reporting later mixed percepts (62% mediated, 95% CI [17, 177], p = .006)

Summary

Introduction

Binocular rivalry occurs when two sufficiently different images are presented simultaneously to each eye: the observer does not usually see them both at the same time but the images compete for access to consciousness (Blake, 2001). Only one of the images dominate conscious perception at a time and observers typically experience alternations in the dominance even though the stimuli stay physically the same. From the view of personality research, the phenomenon is interesting as the sensory input does not change, whereas the dominance and its alterations depend on the interpretation of the observer. This phenomenon provides a unique way to study whether personality affects what we see

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