Responding appropriately to gaze cues is essential for fluent social interaction, playing a crucial role in social learning, collaboration, threat assessment and understanding others’ intentions. Previous research has shown that responses to gaze cues can be studied by investigating the gaze-cuing effect (i.e. the tendency for observers to respond more quickly to targets in locations that were cued by others’ gaze than to uncued targets). A recent study demonstrating that macaques demonstrate larger gaze-cuing effects when viewing dominant conspecifics than when viewing subordinate conspecifics suggests that cues of dominance modulate the gaze-cuing effect in at least one primate species. Here, we show a similar effect of facial cues associated with dominance on gaze cuing in human observers: at short viewing times, observers demonstrated a greater cuing effect for gaze cues from masculinized (i.e. dominant) faces than from feminized (i.e. subordinate) faces. Moreover, this effect of facial masculinity on gaze cuing decreased as viewing time was increased, suggesting that the effect is driven by involuntary responses. Our findings suggest that the mechanisms that underpin reflexive gaze cuing evolved to be sensitive to facial cues of others’ dominance, potentially because such differential gaze cuing promoted desirable outcomes from encounters with dominant individuals.

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IntroductionThe majority of studies of facial attractiveness have emphasised the importance of physical characteristics, such as sexual dimorphism of face shape, symmetry and averageness (see Fink and Penton-Voak 2002 and Rhodes 2006 for reviews). More recent studies, however, have demonstrated that facial attractiveness is influenced by interactions between relatively invariant physical cues in faces and more changeable social signals, such as gaze direction (Conway et al 2008a(Conway et al , 2008bJones et al 2006;Kampe et al 2001). For example, Jones et al (2006) found that preferences for attractive colour and texture cues were stronger when judging the attractiveness of faces that were smiling at the viewer than when judging faces that were looking at the viewer with a neutral expression or that were looking away from the viewer. Additionally, neurobiological evidence suggests that direct gaze increases the reward value of attractive faces (ie the extent to which viewing attractive faces causes activity in brain regions associated with processing rewards), but not of relatively unattractive faces (Kampe et al 2001). Other recent studies have shown that perceiver-directed smiles are considered more attractive from opposite-sex individuals than own-sex individuals (Conway et al 2008a) and from healthy-looking, attractive individuals than relatively unhealthy-looking, unattractive individuals (Conway et al 2008b). While these studies demonstrate interactions between gaze direction and physical characteristics in faces when perceiving the attractiveness of others, it is not known whether similar interactions occur for other types of social attribution, such as dominance.Perceptions Abstract. Although gaze direction and face shape have each been shown to affect perceptions of the dominance of others, the question whether gaze direction and face shape have independent main effects on perceptions of dominance, and whether these effects interact, has not yet been studied. To investigate this issue, we compared dominance ratings of faces with masculinised shapes and direct gaze, masculinised shapes and averted gaze, feminised shapes and direct gaze, and feminised shapes and averted gaze. While faces with direct gaze were generally rated as more dominant than those with averted gaze, this effect of gaze direction was greater when judging faces with masculinised shapes than when judging faces with feminised shapes. Additionally, faces with masculinised shapes were rated as more dominant than those with feminised shapes when faces were presented with direct gaze, but not when faces were presented with averted gaze. Collectively, these findings reveal an interaction between the effects of gaze direction and sexually dimorphic facial cues on judgments of the dominance of others, presenting novel evidence for the existence of complex integrative processes that underpin social perception of faces. Integrating information from face shape and gaze cues may increase the efficiency with which we perceive the dominance of others.

Abstract. Previous studies have shown that preferences for direct versus averted gaze are modulated by emotional expressions and physical attractiveness. For example, preferences for direct gaze are stronger when judging happy or physically attractive faces than when judging disgusted or physically unattractive faces. Here we show that preferences for front versus three-quarter views of faces, in which gaze direction was always congruent with head orientation, are also modulated by emotional expressions and physical attractiveness; participants demonstrated preferences for front views of faces over three-quarter views of faces when judging the attractiveness of happy, physically attractive individuals, but not when judging the attractiveness of relatively unattractive individuals or those with disgusted expressions. Moreover, further analyses indicated that these interactions did not simply reflect differential perceptions of the intensity of the emotional expressions shown in each condition. Collectively, these findings present novel evidence that the effect of the direction of the attention of others on attractiveness judgments is modulated by cues to the physical attractiveness and emotional state of the depicted individual, potentially reflecting psychological adaptations for efficient allocation of social effort. These data also present the first behavioural evidence that the effect of the direction of the attention of others on attractiveness judgments reflects viewer-referenced, rather than face-referenced, coding and/or processing of gaze direction.