Christoph von Castell

Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz | JGU · Department of General and Experimental Psychology

Background Working in an operating room (OR) is physically and mentally challenging: the operation itself demands the surgeon’s full attention, while owing to time and cost efficiency constraints daily planning and emergency care keep interfering on different levels. Thus, multitasking becomes an integral surgical competence. This study aims to exa...

The COVID-19 pandemic has altered the way we interact with each other: mandatory mask-wearing obscures facial information that is crucial for emotion recognition. Whereas the influence of wearing a mask on emotion recognition has been repeatedly investigated, little is known about the impact on interaction effects among emotional signals and other...

The quality of a concert hall primarily depends on its acoustics. But does visual input also have an impact on musical enjoyment? Does the color of ambient lighting modulate the perceived music quality? And are certain colors perceived to fit better than others with a given music piece? To address these questions, we performed three within-subjects...

As the cerebellum is involved in vestibular and time-keeping processes, we asked if the latter are related. We conducted three experiments to investigate the effects of vestibular stimulation on temporal processing of supra-second durations. In Experiment 1, subjects had to perform temporal productions of 10- and 15-s intervals either standing on b...

With the Covid-19 pandemic, many governments introduced nationwide lockdowns that disrupted people's daily routines and promoted social isolation. We applied a longitudinal online survey to investigate the mid-term effects of the mandated restrictions on the perceived passage of time (PPT) and boredom during and after a strict lockdown in Germany....

In the early 19th century, William H. Wollaston impressed the Royal Society of London with engravings of portraits. He manipulated facial features, such as the nose, and thereby dramatically changed the perceived gaze direction, although the eye region with iris and eye socket had remained unaltered. This Wollaston illusion can be thought of as hea...

We conducted two experiments to investigate how observers integrate postural and visual eye-height information when estimating the layout of interior space. In Experiment 1, we varied postural and visual eye-height information independently of each other in a virtual-reality setup. Observers estimated the width, depth, and height of simulated rooms...

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, it has been mandated to keep enlarged distances from others. We interviewed 136 German subjects over five weeks from the end of March to the end of April 2020 during the first wave of infections about their preferred interpersonal distance (IPD) before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic. In response to th...

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, it has been mandated to keep enlarged distances from others. We interviewed 136 German subjects over five weeks from the end of March to the end of April 2020 during the first wave of infections about their preferred interpersonal distance (IPD) before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic. In response to th...

Background: Mandatory rules for social distancing to curb the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic require individuals to maintain a critical interpersonal distance above 1.5 m. However, this contradicts our natural preference, which is closer to 1 m for non-intimate encounters, for example, when asking a stranger for directions. Objective: This review addresses...

How does sexual attraction alter social interaction behavior? We examined the influence of sexual orientation on locomotor approach-avoidance behavior and interpersonal distance. We immersed androphilic and gynophilic male subjects into a virtual environment and presented various male and female virtual persons. In the first experiment, subjects to...

In this study, we examined the impact of psychopathy on approach-avoidance reactions and interpersonal distance (IPD) in response to social cues. We selected a student sample and measured psychopathy via self-report. Participants were immersed in a virtual environment in which a virtual person displayed either angry or happy facial expressions. In...

The quality of a concert hall primarily depends on its acoustics. But does visual input have an impact on the musical enjoyment as well? In the present study, we aimed at answering two questions: First, does the color of ambient light modulate the perceived intensity of certain characteristics of the music we listen to? Referring to multisensory pe...

The texture of an object's surface influences its perceived spatial extent. For example, Hermann von Helmholtz reported that a square patch with black and white stripes appears elongated perpendicular to the stripes' orientation. This time-honoured finding stands in contrast with more recent recommendations by interior-design experts who suggest th...

Violations of personal space are associated with discomfort. However, the exact function linking the magnitude of discomfort to interpersonal distance has not yet been specified. In this study, we explore whether interpersonal distance and discomfort are isotropic with respect to uncomfortably far or close distances. We also extend previous finding...

Previous studies have reported that bright ceilings appear higher than dark ceilings, irrespective of the other colorimetric properties of the ceiling color (hue, saturation) and irrespective of the luminance of the remaining room surfaces (walls, floor). In the present study, we expand these findings to width and depth estimates. We presented ster...

Raw data of the width and depth estimates. Archive file containing the raw datasets (i.e., uncorrected and not aggregated across repetitions per condition) for the width estimates (widthEstimates.csv) and depth estimates (depthEstimates.csv). When the variable 'typoExperimenter' has the value 'true', this indicates that the experimenter noted an un...

Psychopathic traits are often associated with interpersonal and affective deficits. This study examined the impact of psychopathy on judgments of comfortable egocentric interpersonal distance (Experiment 1) and exocentric interpersonal distance (Experiment 2). We selected a student sample and measured psychopathy via self-report. To study spatial b...

Objective: We investigate effects of the hue, saturation, and luminance of ceiling color on the perceived height of interior spaces. Background: Previous studies have reported that the perceived height of an interior space is influenced by the luminance of the ceiling, but not by the luminance contrast between ceiling and walls: brighter ceiling...

Our ability to estimate distances, be it verbally or by locomotion, is exquisite at close range (action space). At distances above 100 m (vista space), verbal estimates continue to be quite accurate, whereas locomotor estimates have been found to be grossly underestimated. Until now, however, the latter have been performed on a treadmill, which mig...

The perceived duration of a visual stimulus depends on various features, such as its size, shape, and movement. Potential effects of stimulus color have not been investigated in sufficient detail yet, but the well-known effects of arousal on time perception suggest that arousing hues, such as red, might induce an overestimation of duration. By mean...

Folklore has it that ambient color has the power to relax or arouse the observer and enhance performance when executing cognitive tasks. We picked a number of commercially available colors that allegedly have the power to alter cognitive performance and the emotional state, and exposed subjects to them while solving a battery of cognitive tasks. Th...

It is still unclear why psychopathic individuals might prefer shorter interpersonal distance (IPD). Therefore, we investigated whether psychopathy effects on IPD are modulated by facial expression and eogcentric vs. exocentric views.

When judging interior space or roominess, a dark ceiling is judged to be lower than a light ceiling. The method of metric judgments (e.g., on a centimeter scale) that has typically been used in such tasks may reflect a genuine perceptual effect or it may reflect a cognitively mediated impression. We employed a height-matching method in which percei...

Previous studies reported the perceived height of interior spaces to increase with increasing ceiling lightness. These experiments used verbal estimates of ceiling height, e. g., in centimeters, which might be influenced by cognitive processes. In the present study, we used a height matching task based on comparisons of a given interior space to a...

Despite the ubiquity of interior space design, there is virtually no scientific research on the influence of furnishing on the perception of interior space. We conducted two experiments in which observers were asked to estimate the spatial dimensions (size of the room dimensions in meters and centimeters) and to judge subjective spaciousness of var...

Despite the ubiquity of interior space design, there is virtually no scientific research on the influence of furnishing on the perception of interior space. We conducted two experiments in which observers were asked to estimate the spatial dimensions (size of the room dimensions in meters and centimeters) and to judge subjective spaciousness of var...

Ob man sich in einem niedrigen Kellerraum bewegt oder abschätzen möchte, ob ein hohes Möbelstück senkrecht durch den Türrahmen passt, die Einschätzung der Deckenhöhe von Innenräumen hat alltägliche Relevanz. Unsere bisherigen Studien zur Einschätzung der Deckenhöhe zielten vor allem auf eine verbale Einschätzung der wahrgenommenen Deckenhöhe in Met...

Der Farbe Pink werden starke und spezifische Effekte auf die Emotion zugeschrieben (z.B. Schauss, 1979), während andere Studien diese Effekte nicht replizieren konnten (z.B. Gilliam & Unruh, 1988). In den letzten Jahren wurden unter anderem Gefängniszellen in Pink gestrichen, um die Zelleninsassen zu beruhigen. In unserer Studie haben wir die Wirku...