Effect of thermal need on responses to pictorial stimuli.

Summary In order to provide more rigorous experimental evidence on the question of need projection in thematic materials, 72 U. S. Army enlistee volunteers were subjected to systematically varying degrees of body cooling and confronted with pictorial stimuli, varying in relevance, to which they could make quantifiable vicarious heat-seeking responses. Thermal need was independently assessed as a negatively accelerated inverse function of ambient temperature, and responses to the most relevant stimuli provided conclusive evidence of need projection as a similarly accelerated function. Scenes which differentiated significantly between thermal conditions were those which suggested the more immediate and thorough reduction of thermal discomfort. The relevance of results to studies of motivated perception was discussed.