Lev Kuleshov was an early Russian filmmaker who believed that juxtaposing two unrelated images could convey a separate meaning. In the Kuleshov experiment he filmed Ivan Mozhukhin, a famous Russian actor, and shots of a bowl of soup, a girl, a teddy bear, and a child's coffin. He then cut the shot of the actor into the other shot; each time it was the same shot of the actor. Viewers felt that the shots of the actor conveyed different emotions suggested by the other stimulus, though each time it was in fact the same shot.

Kuleshov used the experiment to indicate the usefulness and effectiveness of film editing. The effect has also been studied by psychologists.

References

• Wallbott, H. G. (1988). In and out of context: Influences of facial expression and context information on emotion attributions. British Journal of Social Psychology, 27, 357-369.