Only your eyes tell me what you like: Exploring the liking effect induced by other's gaze

Abstract

Our preferences are sensitive to social influences. For instance, we like more the objects that are looked-at by others than non-looked-at objects. Here, we explored this liking effect, using a modified paradigm of attention cueing by gaze. First, we investigated if the liking effect induced by gaze relied on motoric representations of the target object by testing if the liking effect could be observed for non-manipulable (alphanumeric characters) as well as for manipulable items (common tools). We found a significant liking effect for the alphanumeric items. Second, we tested if another type of powerful social cue could also induce a liking effect. We used an equivalent paradigm but with pointing hands instead of gaze cues. Pointing hands elicited a robust attention-orienting effect, but they did not induce any significant liking effect. This study extends previous findings and reinforces the view of eye gaze as a special cue in human interactions.

Gaze perception induces early attention orienting effects in occipito-parietal regions

“…Bayliss et al, 2006), we chose to use a cuetarget asynchrony of 500 ms. The paradigm was also validated in a previous behavioral study of our group (Ulloa et al, 2014). Based on previous EEG and fMRI evidence, we expected to find early modulation of brain responses to targets within occipital and parietal regions following attention orienting by eye gaze.…”

The Effects of Shared Opinions on Nonverbal Mimicry

“…Thus, people may be more susceptible to mimicry of a person who is in agreement with them because more of their perception and attention is directed toward that person's behavior than a person who is in disagreement with them. People are more likely to gaze at faces that are similar to themselves (Hungr & Hunt, 2012) and gaze at people and objects they like (Schotter, 2010;Ulloa, Marchetti, Taffou, & George, 2015); however, future research may want to examine the moderating role of attention more directly, possibly by measuring participants' eye gaze toward each confederate to establish that participants are directing more of their attention toward the confederate in agreement with them. For example, research has found that pictures of emotional content received more participant eye gazes and for longer durations than neutral content, and even more so if the emotional content was pleasant rather than nonpleasant (Nummenmaa, Hyönä, & Calvo, 2006).…”

A closer look at the size of the gaze-liking effect: a preregistered replication

“…Specifically, the significant findings for the gaze-liking effect range from dz = 0.35 (Ulloa, Marchetti, Taffou, & George, 2015) to 1.22 (for trustworthy faces; King et al, 2011). Moreover, some studies have reported non-significant results in conditions that were expected to show an effect: 1) for gaze cues on ratings for garage objects (Ulloa et al, 2015) and 2) for pointing gestures on ratings for kitchen and garage and other objects (Ulloa et al, 2015). Overall, there is considerable variability in the reported effect sizes and research would benefit from a more precise estimate of the effect size.…”

“…This is challenging because as stated above, previous studies have reported varying effect sizes. Our solution was to base our sample size on being able to detect the smallest significant effect size reported in the literature; dz = 0.35 (Ulloa et al, 2015) with a specific level of precision: We wanted our most likely estimates to fall within a region no larger than dz = .5 (plus or minus dz = 0.25). Although the study by Ulloa et al was not a direct replication of the original study (it included a different set of faces and additional conditions) the sample size was larger (N=36) than in the original study, making it a reasonable candidate for the smallest effect size of interest.…”