We do not visually perceive the individuals around us objectively. Researchers from the University of Southern California (USA) have shown that social factors have a direct effect on how we process reality . Whether one person likes or dislikes another influences how the brain processes their movements, even if they are as simple as raising a cup of coffee. This has been shown by Mona Sobhani and her colleagues in a study published in the journal PLoS ONE .
Most of the time, seeing someone in motion triggers our mirror neurons. But if the person we are observing displeases us for any reason, we perceive that he or she moves more slowly than he really does. This has been demonstrated by Sobhani, who in his experiments presented a number of subjects as pro-Nazis, while others were labeled as "open-minded", and asked various individuals to observe them. As shown by the images obtained by magnetic resonance, there is a clear difference in the activation of the neurons of the ventral premotor cortex as a function of the affinity between the observing individual and the one being observed. "Something as basic as the way we process movement stimuli is related to our interpersonal relationships and is affected by social factors ", the authors of the research conclude.
