The multisensory perception of social cues in virtual crowds

Abstract

The current thesis contributes to the field of social and affective psychology, with a focus on the perception of social cues from groups or crowds of people. While to date there is a wealth of literature in this area on the perception of social and emotional cues when perceiving single persons, little is known about how these cues are perceived in crowds. This is an issue that needs to be addressed, since crowds represent situations rich in social and emotional information. As such the study of perceptual mechanisms of social and emotional cues in crowds could broaden our understanding of how efficiently social information from other humans, including groups of people, is determined.