Preference distorts visual space

We investigated whether visual spatial processing can be affected by the degree of preference for paintings. Firstly, the participants were required to manipulate a mouse and point to the location of the target that appeared at the periphery, following the paintings presented at center. After completing this task, the participants judged their preference for each painting on a five-point scale. The results showed that the spatial orientation of the targets was significantly biased towards the center when the highly likable paintings were presented, while the biases decreased in the case of the dislikable paintings. Additional experiments showed that these biases were not attributed to physical features of the paintings. These findings indicate that the subjective preference for visual stimuli potentially distorts our visual field and modulate our pointing performance.