Abstract
Order and disorder are prevalent in everyday life, yet little is known about the neural real-time processing that occurs during the perception of disorder relative to order. In the present study, from a cognitive perspective, by adopting the ERP method, we aimed to examine the elicited real-time neural signals of disorder and order perception when participants processed physical environmental and basic visual disorder and order pictures in an irrelevant red or green rectangle detection task, and we attempted to test the hypothesis of cognitive disfluency in disorder perception. Generally, we observed that at each measured time interval, the ERPs elicited by order stimuli were more positive (less negative) in amplitude than those elicited by disorder stimuli at the frontal electrodes (represented by F7/F8, FT7/FT8, Fz, and FCz), whereas at the posterior electrodes (represented by P7/P8, PO7/PO8, Pz, and POz), the opposite was true. These data reveal for the first time the neural underpinnings of disorder and order perception, extending our understanding of the nature of disorder and order. This study also contributes to the cognitive fluency literature and indirectly expands the research on disorder and order stimuli in cognitive fluency.
Highlights
Order and disorder are prevalent in everyday life, both in the home and in the workplace (Koole and Van den Berg, 2005), as well as in culture (Baumeister, 2005)
The Event-related potentials (ERPs) Components Elicited by the Basic Visual Order/Disorder Pictures
For the ERP components elicited by the basic visual order/disorder pictures (frontal electrode voltage average from F7/F8, FT7/FT8, Fz and FCz (Figure 2) and the posterior electrode voltage averaged from P7/P8, PO7/PO8, Pz and POz) (Figure 3), two-way repeated ANOVA with order type and hemisphere was conducted separately
Summary
Order and disorder are prevalent in everyday life, both in the home and in the workplace (Koole and Van den Berg, 2005), as well as in culture (Baumeister, 2005). Considerable evidence from different areas of scientific inquiry has suggested that in contrast to perceived order, perceived disorder apparently has a variety of detrimental psychological and behavioral consequences. Exposure to disorderly environments can elicit negative effects, including perceived powerlessness (Geis and Ross, 1998) and distress (Cutrona et al, 2000), feeling unsafe (Perkins et al, 2010), depression (Ross, 2000), and anxiety and performance monitoring (Tullett et al, 2015); can diminish a sense of meaning in life (Heintzelman et al, 2013) and reduce self-control and cognitive control (Chae and Zhu, 2014); and can encourage delinquency, rule breaking and criminal behavior (Keizer et al, 2008; Kotabe et al, 2016b)
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