Research has generally suggested enhanced cognitive performance when performing jointly with others in social settings. However, the interpersonal influence on visuospatial attention was not well understood. With a newly developed dual attention paradigm, we investigated how paying attention to the same spatial location with another person affects one’s attention performance. Participant pairs independently performed go/no-go tasks to visual targets while sustainedly attending to same or different locations, and showed reduced attention effects when sharing spatial attention (Experiment 1, N = 40). This dual attention effect relied on the presence of another individual performing a similar task, being reversed when participants performed the same task in isolation (Experiment 2, N = 38), and persisted under an increased perceptual load (Experiment 3, N = 45). These data showed a diminishing effect of shared attention, likely driven by stronger response inhibition or increased mentalizing/monitoring when people attended together.
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