Followers are not followed: Observed group interactions modulate subsequent social attention.

Abstract

We asked whether previous observations of group interactions modulate subsequent social attention episodes. Participants first completed a learning phase with 2 conditions. In the "leader" condition 1 of 3 identities turned her gaze first, followed by the 2 other faces. In the "follower" condition, 1 of the identities turned her gaze after the 2 other faces had first shifted their gaze. Thus, participants observed that some individuals were consistently leaders and others followers of others' attention. In the test phase, the faces of leaders and followers were presented in a gaze cueing paradigm. Remarkably, the followers did not elicit gaze cueing. Our data demonstrate that individuals who do not guide group attention in exploring the environment are ineffective social attention directors in later encounters. Thus, the role played in previous group social attention interactions modulates the relative weight assigned to others' gaze: we ignore the gaze of group followers.

How attention gates social interactions

“…Consistent with these results, studies have also reported greater gaze following for gaze cues displayed by high‐status individuals, relative to gaze cues displayed by low‐status individuals, using a wide array of social status manipulations, including physical dominance, professional prestige, political leadership, and leadership inferred from group dynamics . As outlined before, Jones and colleagues reported greater gaze following for dominant‐looking faces relative to nondominant faces .…”

“…Finally, Capozzi and colleagues used an adapted gaze–cuing procedure involving multiple faces, in which some individuals emerged as group leaders (i.e., they turned their gaze first and the other faces followed their gaze) and others as group followers (i.e., always following others' gazes). When participants were later presented with a gaze‐cuing task, in which either images of leaders’ or followers’ gazes served as cuing stimuli, they exhibited greater gaze following in response to gaze cues displayed by leaders relative to gaze cues displayed by followers . Together, these studies show that social attention depends on evaluative processes that act to prioritize social cues coming from certain agents over others based on their social status.…”

Perceiving crowd attention: Gaze following in human crowds with conflicting cues

“…The current results can be supported by previous studies at the individual level. In previous gaze cue studies, cueing strength was found to be modulated by social status (Dalmaso, Galfano, Coricelli, & Castelli, 2014;Dalmaso, Pavan, Castelli, & Galfano, 2012), political temperament (Carraro, Dalmaso, Castelli, & Galfano, 2015;Liuzza et al, 2011), facial expression (Lassalle & Itier, 2013;Tipples, 2006), facial dominance (Jones et al, 2010), and even social interaction history (Capozzi, Becchio, Willemse, & Bayliss, 2016;Dalmaso, Edwards, & Bayliss, 2016). Take, for example, social status.…”

Infants Choose Those Who Defer in Conflicts

“…This is especially true for humans, where high-status individuals can provide guidance, protection and knowledge to subordinates [2,29,30]. Indeed, human adults [31][32][33], human toddlers [34], and adult bonobos [35] prefer high-status individuals to low-status ones. Here we present 6 experiments testing whether 10-to 16-monthold human infants choose high-or low-status individuals-specifically, winners or yielders in zero-sum conflicts-and find that infants choose puppets who yield.…”