The Honi phenomenon revisited: factors underlying the resistance to perceptual distortion of one's partner.
An individual being viewed in an Ames room usually appears considerably altered in physical size to an observer. However, some married persons perceive less size distortion of their spouses than a stranger. This instance of selective perceptual distortion, known as the Honi phenomenon, could perhaps reflect differential familiarity and/or emotional involvement toward these stimulus persons. Using heterosexual couples as subjects, we investigated familiarity (i.e., length of the relationship), type of relationship (i.e., dating, engaged, or married), and positive cathexis (i.e., love, liking, and trust of one's partner) as possible mediators of this effect and also explored the impact of some judgemental variations. Neither familiarity nor type of relationship influenced relative perceptual distortion of partner versus stranger. Rather, selective perceptual distortion was directly related to the strength of positive cathexis, principally among females. Only women high in positive cathexis exhibited the Honi phenomenon and perceived a stranger as being more distorted than their partners. In contrast, size judgements by men were affected only by the sequence in which stimulus persons were observed. Implications and interpretations of these findings are discussed.
D001364:Awareness; D002409:Cathexis; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D010469:Perceptual Distortion; D012737:Sex Factors; D012858:Size Perception; D012938:Social Perception; D013028:Space Perception; D014796:Visual Perception