Abstract
Responding appropriately to gaze cues is essential for fluent social interaction, playing a crucial role in social learning, collaboration, threat assessment and understanding others’ intentions. Previous research has shown that responses to gaze cues can be studied by investigating the gaze-cuing effect (i.e. the tendency for observers to respond more quickly to targets in locations that were cued by others’ gaze than to uncued targets). A recent study demonstrating that macaques demonstrate larger gaze-cuing effects when viewing dominant conspecifics than when viewing subordinate conspecifics suggests that cues of dominance modulate the gaze-cuing effect in at least one primate species. Here, we show a similar effect of facial cues associated with dominance on gaze cuing in human observers: at short viewing times, observers demonstrated a greater cuing effect for gaze cues from masculinized (i.e. dominant) faces than from feminized (i.e. subordinate) faces. Moreover, this effect of facial masculinity on gaze cuing decreased as viewing time was increased, suggesting that the effect is driven by involuntary responses. Our findings suggest that the mechanisms that underpin reflexive gaze cuing evolved to be sensitive to facial cues of others’ dominance, potentially because such differential gaze cuing promoted desirable outcomes from encounters with dominant individuals.
Highlights
The ability to follow others’ gaze is important for social interaction in many species, playing a critical role in collaboration, social learning, threat assessments and understanding others’ intentions and attitudes (BaronCohen 1995; Emery 2000; Tomasello et al 2005; Zuberbuhler & Byrne 2006; Frischen et al 2007; Frith & Frith 2007; Zuberbuhler 2008)
As previous studies have demonstrated that the reflexive component of the short-term gaze-cuing effect is most apparent at short viewing times (e.g. Driver et al 1999; see Friesen & Kingstone 1998; Langton & Bruce 1999; Deaner & Platt 2003), our findings suggest that facial masculinity modulates reflexive gaze cuing
As decreased gaze cuing at longer viewing times is thought to be a direct consequence of the reflexive component of the short-term gaze-cuing effect (Friesen & Kingstone 1998; Driver et al 1999; Langton & Bruce 1999; Deaner & Platt 2003), the linear effect of viewing time that we observed for masculinized faces, but not for feminized faces, suggests that facial masculinity modulates the reflexive component of the short-term gaze-cuing effect
Summary
The ability to follow others’ gaze is important for social interaction in many species, playing a critical role in collaboration, social learning, threat assessments and understanding others’ intentions and attitudes (BaronCohen 1995; Emery 2000; Tomasello et al 2005; Zuberbuhler & Byrne 2006; Frischen et al 2007; Frith & Frith 2007; Zuberbuhler 2008). These findings suggest that facial cues other than gaze direction can modulate the short-term gaze cuing effect in human observers under some circumstances.
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