Today Sérgio Ribeiro successfully defended his master's thesis entitled "The effect of anxiety on the visual perception of social scenes: how visual predictions are used about threat."
Sérgio explored in his thesis the impact of anxiety states on our perception of social scenarios. He questioned whether when we feel anxiety we are less capable of anticipating social behavior, thus making it more difficult for us to decipher a person (something "camouflaged") who is involved in a social interaction.This study came to the conclusion that the anxiety felt normally, despite the clear impact revealed by those who experience it, does not seem to affect our perception of social scenes. Sérgio's thesis expanded on simpler studies on this topic, extending their conclusions to the context of our day-to-day life.
Sérgio's thesis was supervised by Prof.Sandra C. Soares, with the collaboration of doctoral student Fábio Silva, and with the discussion of Doctor Pedro Rosa from Universidade Lusófona.
