Abstract
The present study employed the affective priming paradigm and measurements of event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate implicit affective reactions elicited by gaze stimuli. Participants categorized positive and negative words primed by direct gaze, averted gaze and closed eyes. The behavioral response time (RT) results indicated that direct gaze implicitly elicited more positive affective reactions than did closed eyes. Analyses of the ERP responses to the target words revealed a priming effect on the N170 and an interaction on late positive potential (LPP) responses, and congruently with the behavioral results, suggested that, compared to closed eyes, direct gaze was affectively more congruent with positive words and more incongruent with negative words. The priming effect on the N170 response indicated that gaze stimuli influenced the subsequent affective word processing at an early stage of information processing. In conclusion, the present behavioral and electrophysiological evidence suggests that direct gaze automatically activates more positive affective reactions than closed eyes.
Highlights
Gaze and eye contact are crucial social signals, which provide information about individuals’ direction of attention and intentions
For the response time (RT), the analysis of variance (ANOVA) showed a main effect of word valence, F(1,31) = 46.84, p < 0.001, ηp2 = 0.602
Pairwise comparisons showed that responses to positive words were faster after direct gaze (M = 629 ms) than after closed eyes (M = 646 ms, p = 0.002, Cohen’s d = 0.69)
Summary
Gaze and eye contact are crucial social signals, which provide information about individuals’ direction of attention and intentions. Eye gaze signals the sender’s approach-avoidance tendencies, but it activates corresponding motivational tendencies in the perceivers. Studies investigating the skin conductance response (SCR), a measure of physiological arousal, have shown greater SCRs in response to direct gaze as compared to averted gaze or closed eyes (Nichols and Champness, 1971; Hietanen et al, 2008; Helminen et al, 2011). These findings indicate that eye gaze is a powerful stimulus eliciting affective-motivational responses in the perceiver
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