The role of values and emotions in visual perception: psychological and neural mechanisms

This narrative review synthesises current evidence on how personal values and emotions modulate visual attention and early sensory processing within the ventral visual stream. Moving beyond approaches that conceptualise ‘value’ primarily in terms of subjective utility or reward, this review also incorporates research on personal values, broader beliefs and guiding principles, focusing in particular on religious beliefs and climate-change-related environmental values. We summarise the general mechanisms through which values and emotions exert top-down influence on visual processing. Further, we review the behavioural and neuroscientific evidence on how internalised value frameworks bias visual perception. Moreover, we address the role of emotion in directing attentional capture, describing its intrinsic link to perceived value. By integrating diverse psychological and neuroscientific perspectives, this review provides an overview elucidating the ways in which abstract value systems and emotions tune the early stages of visual perceptual processing.