According to a new study published in Neuroscience of Consciousness, the security cameras aren't just watching you, that are also altering how our brain processes information. There are a lot of cameras that we encounter when going out – from traffic cameras to surveillance cameras which are there to record our movements. The study suggests that these cameras are also responsible for controlling our behavior as they make us more conscious about following rules and not to steal anything.
The team of researchers did an experiment about how CCTV cameras can affect our unconscious and conscious visual processing. For the experiment, they gathered 54 undergraduate students and divided them into two groups, with the first group doing a task with surveillance cameras while the other group doing the same task without surveillance cameras. The group with surveillance cameras was aware that they were being monitored and they consented beforehand and knew that cameras would be capturing their whole body as they did the task. Continuous flash suppression (CFS) was the visual task given to them where one eye saw the rapidly changing colors and the other eye saw faces which were looking at them directly or indirectly. This was the technique where the brain first processes the images unconsciously before making them reach our consciousness.
The results of the experiment found that the participants who were being surveilled became hyper aware of face stimuli faster than the group who wasn't being surveilled. Overall, the group detected faces which were looking directly at them faster than faces looking away from them. This mechanism goes way back to our evolutionary survival mechanisms as we get hyper-aware of threats and other agents in our environment which are harmful for us. This wasn't because the participants became more aware because they were being surveilled. It was when researchers used geometric patterns instead of faces, they got the same results.
The study is important for mental health because people with social anxiety disorder and psychosis also get hyper-aware of eye gaze and think that they are being perceived or watched. This suggests that being surveilled brings the same feelings of social awareness from within us even if we are not concerned that we are being watched. The findings of the study isn't concerned about privacy, rather how our public mental health gets affected while being surveilled. The study says that being monitored and surveilled is affecting us more deeply mentally and perceptually than what we let on.
Image: DIW-Aigen
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The team of researchers did an experiment about how CCTV cameras can affect our unconscious and conscious visual processing. For the experiment, they gathered 54 undergraduate students and divided them into two groups, with the first group doing a task with surveillance cameras while the other group doing the same task without surveillance cameras. The group with surveillance cameras was aware that they were being monitored and they consented beforehand and knew that cameras would be capturing their whole body as they did the task. Continuous flash suppression (CFS) was the visual task given to them where one eye saw the rapidly changing colors and the other eye saw faces which were looking at them directly or indirectly. This was the technique where the brain first processes the images unconsciously before making them reach our consciousness.
The results of the experiment found that the participants who were being surveilled became hyper aware of face stimuli faster than the group who wasn't being surveilled. Overall, the group detected faces which were looking directly at them faster than faces looking away from them. This mechanism goes way back to our evolutionary survival mechanisms as we get hyper-aware of threats and other agents in our environment which are harmful for us. This wasn't because the participants became more aware because they were being surveilled. It was when researchers used geometric patterns instead of faces, they got the same results.
The study is important for mental health because people with social anxiety disorder and psychosis also get hyper-aware of eye gaze and think that they are being perceived or watched. This suggests that being surveilled brings the same feelings of social awareness from within us even if we are not concerned that we are being watched. The findings of the study isn't concerned about privacy, rather how our public mental health gets affected while being surveilled. The study says that being monitored and surveilled is affecting us more deeply mentally and perceptually than what we let on.
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