).Humans tend to shift attention in response to the averted gaze of a face they are fixating, a phenomenon known as gaze cuing. In the present paper, we aimed to address whether the social status of the cuing face modulates this phenomenon. Participants were asked to look at the faces of 16 individuals and read fictive curriculum vitae associated with each of them that could describe the person as having a high or low social status. The association between each specific face and either high or low social status was counterbalanced between participants. The same faces were then used as stimuli in a gaze-cuing task. The results showed a greater gaze-cuing effect for high-status faces than for low-status faces, independently of the specific identity of the face. These findings confirm previous evidence regarding the important role of social factors in shaping social attention and show that a modulation of gaze cuing can be observed even when knowledge about social status is acquired through episodic learning.Keywords: attention; gaze cuing; social cognition INTRODUCTIONResearch has shown that individuals belonging to several species, including humans, tend to shift their attention in the direction gazed by conspecifics, a phenomenon reflecting orienting of social attention known as gaze cuing [1 -3]. Social attention is an essential ability for obtaining an empathic contact with others and to discover potentially relevant information in the environment [3].Although gaze cuing is a robust phenomenon that can be considered automatic in several regards [4,5], evidence is accumulating showing that it is sensitive to several social modulators. A pioneer animal study reported that submissive macaque monkeys (Macaca mulatta) showed a generalized gaze-cuing effect independently of whether the face stimulus depicted a high-or a low-status individual, whereas dominant macaque monkeys selectively followed the gaze of high-status individuals ([6], cf. [7] for a non-significant effect of social ranking on gaze following). Dominant-like exemplars, who are likely to have elevated testosterone levels, are more closely attended to and trigger stronger gaze-cuing effects. A related modulation has recently been demonstrated also in humans, who show greater gaze-cuing effects for

Viewing a face with averted gaze results in a spatial shift of attention in the corresponding direction, a phenomenon defined as gaze-mediated orienting. In the present paper, we investigated whether this effect is influenced by social factors. Across three experiments, White and Black participants were presented with faces of White and Black individuals. A modified spatial cueing paradigm was used in which a peripheral target stimulus requiring a discrimination response was preceded by a noninformative gaze cue. Results showed that Black participants shifted attention to the averted gaze of both ingroup and outgroup faces, whereas White participants selectively shifted attention only in response to individuals of their same group. Interestingly, the modulatory effect of social factors was context-dependent and emerged only when group membership was situationally salient to participants. It was hypothesized that differences in the relative social status of the two groups might account for the observed asymmetry between White and Black participants. A final experiment ruled out an alternative explanation based on differences in perceptual familiarity with the face stimuli. Overall, these findings strengthen the idea that gaze-mediated orienting is a socially-connoted phenomenon.

Recent studies have tried to shed light on the automaticity of attentional shifts triggered by gaze and arrows with mixed results. In the present research, we aimed at testing a strong definition of resistance to suppression for orienting of attention elicited by these two cues. In five experiments, participants were informed with 100% certainty about the future location of a target they had to react to by presentation of either a direction word at the beginning of each trial or instructions at the beginning of each block. Gaze and arrows were presented before the target as uninformative distractors irrelevant for the task. The results showed similar patterns for gaze and arrows-namely, an interference effect when the distractors were incongruent with the upcoming target location. This suggests that the orienting of attention mediated by gaze and arrows can be considered as strongly automatic.

Interpersonal dynamics may play a crucial role in the perpetuation of stereotypes. In an experimental study, participants interacted with a confederate who provided either stereotypeconsistent or stereotype-inconsistent descriptions about the elderly. Based on the assumption that mimicry represents a social glue that fosters interpersonal liking and affiliation, we assessed the extent to which participants mimicked the nonverbal behaviors of the confederate as a function of the stereotypicality of the descriptions. Results showed that nonconscious mimicry was more likely when the speaker relied on stereotypes rather than on stereotype-inconsistent information. In Study 2 the effect was replicated in relation to national stereotypes. This finding indicates that stereotypers are faced with subtle nonverbal cues from the audience that can retroactively reinforce their behaviors and thus make stereotype dismissal so difficult to be achieved. ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPTMimicking stereotypers 3The stereotyper and the chameleon:The effects of stereotype use on perceivers' mimicry Stereotypes are very resistant to change. Indeed, intraindividual cognitive processes tend to selectively enhance the encoding and memory for stereotype-consistent information (see Fiske, 1998), and interpersonal communication processes tend to favor stereotype-consistent information (Lyons & Kashima, 2003;Ruscher, 1998; see Kashima, Klein, & Clark, 2007, for a review). For instance, when a story is transmitted through communication chains, it rapidly undergoes very specific transformation such that stereotype-consistent information is retained whereas stereotypeinconsistent information tends to be omitted (Lyons & Kashima, 2001. In this way, recipients of communication are finally left with biased descriptions of persons and events. In addition, stereotype-consistent and -inconsistent information is transmitted at different levels of abstraction, and the use of abstract language in the case of stereotypical information further conveys the idea that stereotypes do generalize across situations and group members (Wigboldus, Semin, &

Attitudes are often shaped through social influence processes. We examined how observation of nonverbal behaviors can impact on implicit and explicit racial attitudes. In Study 1, participants observed an interracial interaction in which a White actor expressed friendly or unfriendly nonverbal behaviors toward a Black target (e.g., low eye contact, large seating distance). The results show that newly formed implicit attitudes toward the Black actor were shaped accordingly. In Study 2, participants were required to read a passage containing stereotypical contents against Black people while a confederate either remained neutral or expressed her approval (e.g., nodding). Implicit attitudes toward Black people became more negative in the latter condition. The results confirm the power of nonverbal cues in shaping implicit attitude

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