A look into the ballot box: Gaze following conveys information about implicit attitudes toward politicians

Abstract

Although considered a predominantly automatic social behaviour, gaze following (GF) is sensitive to complex social factors like political affiliation and ideology. The present study aimed to determine whether the differential proneness to in-group leaders' gaze is related to attitudes towards politicians as measured by other implicit procedures. A GF paradigm was used to test the extent to which electors were prone to gaze following when attending to two female candidates who competed for the position of governor in an Italian election campaign. Results showed that GF significantly predicts voting intentions. Also, it was found that GF is significantly and positively correlated with the Implicit Association Test (IAT). Hierarchical multiple regression models illustrated that GF and IAT uniquely predict voting intentions, accounting for a substantial proportion of variance. Thus GF and IAT, even though significantly related, seem to account for different aspects of the attitudes towards candidates. A multivariate regression model showed that, while IAT scores are predicted by explicit emotions toward the candidate, GF is predicted by the candidates' perceived influence within their political coalition.

Interpersonal Multisensory Stimulation reduces the overwhelming distracting power of self-gaze: psychophysical evidence for ‘engazement’

“…gaze-following and gaze cueing22). Previous studies indicate that observing directionally oriented saccades automatically triggers in an onlooker the tendency to make a saccade directed in the same direction232431 and activates fronto-parietal and temporal cortical regions similar to those recruited during actual execution of eye movements3233. Here, we found that seeing one's own saccades triggered an oculomotor program that maximally interfered with the ongoing programming and execution of saccades directed in the opposite direction.…”

“…Thus, we combined the enfacement paradigm15 with a gaze-following task202324 to explore if experiencing self-other merging with a close other may reduce the distracting power of one's own gaze22 compared to the friend's gaze, and if social perception variables and individual empathic personality traits may drive the power of this effect, as initially found for the enfacement15.…”

The politics of attention contextualized: gaze but not arrow cuing of attention is moderated by political temperament

“…For instance, it has recently been shown that when faces of real politicians are used as cue, conservatives and liberals are less influenced by gaze direction of their respective outgroup leaders (Liuzza et al 2011(Liuzza et al , 2013. These results strongly emphasize the importance of political variables in shaping social attention.…”

Own-age biases in adults’ and children’s joint attention: Biased face prioritization, but not gaze following!

“…A full understanding of joint attention requires us to understand these top-down processes. For example, we are more likely to follow the gaze of certain individuals such as people who are of high status (Dalmaso, Pavan, Castelli, & Galfano, 2012), or of our own political persuasion (Liuzza et al, 2013) or race (Dalmaso, Galfano, & Castelli, 2015). Whilst several papers have reported gaze following to be independent of emotional expression (Bayliss, Frischen, Fenske, & Tipper, 2007;Hietanen & Leppanen, 2003;Holmes, Richards, & Green, 2006), it has become apparent that when participants were required to detect an emotionally salient target, the emotional expression does influence gaze cueing, with stronger cueing for fearful than for happy faces (Bayliss, Schuch, & Tipper, 2010;Kuhn & Tipples, 2011;Pecchinenda, Pes, Ferlazzo, & Zoccolotti, 2008), which suggests that joint attentional processes may be more strategic than previously thought (Baron-Cohen, 1995).…”