Social status gates social attention in humans

Abstract

).Humans tend to shift attention in response to the averted gaze of a face they are fixating, a phenomenon known as gaze cuing. In the present paper, we aimed to address whether the social status of the cuing face modulates this phenomenon. Participants were asked to look at the faces of 16 individuals and read fictive curriculum vitae associated with each of them that could describe the person as having a high or low social status. The association between each specific face and either high or low social status was counterbalanced between participants. The same faces were then used as stimuli in a gaze-cuing task. The results showed a greater gaze-cuing effect for high-status faces than for low-status faces, independently of the specific identity of the face. These findings confirm previous evidence regarding the important role of social factors in shaping social attention and show that a modulation of gaze cuing can be observed even when knowledge about social status is acquired through episodic learning.Keywords: attention; gaze cuing; social cognition INTRODUCTIONResearch has shown that individuals belonging to several species, including humans, tend to shift their attention in the direction gazed by conspecifics, a phenomenon reflecting orienting of social attention known as gaze cuing [1 -3]. Social attention is an essential ability for obtaining an empathic contact with others and to discover potentially relevant information in the environment [3].Although gaze cuing is a robust phenomenon that can be considered automatic in several regards [4,5], evidence is accumulating showing that it is sensitive to several social modulators. A pioneer animal study reported that submissive macaque monkeys (Macaca mulatta) showed a generalized gaze-cuing effect independently of whether the face stimulus depicted a high-or a low-status individual, whereas dominant macaque monkeys selectively followed the gaze of high-status individuals ([6], cf. [7] for a non-significant effect of social ranking on gaze following). Dominant-like exemplars, who are likely to have elevated testosterone levels, are more closely attended to and trigger stronger gaze-cuing effects. A related modulation has recently been demonstrated also in humans, who show greater gaze-cuing effects for

Social orienting in gaze leading: a mechanism for shared attention

“…Detecting that you have caused an individual to re-orient their attention to align their attention with yours may be a socially rewarding experience [7,14], akin to a social approach [59] or detecting that one has been imitated [22]. We already know that macaque [60,61] and human [62,63] social attention is influenced by affiliation, perceived dominance or status of the other individual. One could speculate the converse relationship-that being followed could promote feelings of empowerment in the 'leader' as they exert control over others' behaviour (even incidentally).…”

Intergroup threat gates social attention in humans

“…The gaze-cueing task is based on those used in previous studies [4,11]: first, a white cross appeared for 500 ms. Second, a face with direct gaze appeared for 900 ms, after which the pupils moved to the left or right for 200 or 800 ms, and then a white target ('T' or 'L') appeared with a time-out limit of 2000 ms. After the target, a black screen appeared for 2, 4, 6 or 8 s (figure 1).…”

“…The intergroup relations between the two groups were manipulated as threatening in study a, and as non-threatening in study b. Then a standard gaze-cueing paradigm was employed [4]. Our expectation was that participants would follow the gaze of threatening out-group faces in study a, while participants would not follow the gaze of non-threatening out-group faces in study b.…”

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).…”