Perceiving social gaze produces the reversed congruency effect.

Abstract

Numerous studies have shown that the gaze of others produces a special attentional process, such as the eye contact effect or joint attention. This study investigated the attentional process triggered by various types of gaze stimuli (i.e., human, cat, fish, koala, and robot gaze). A total of 300 university students participated in five experiments. They performed a spatial Stroop task in which five types of gaze stimuli were presented as targets. Participants were asked to judge the direction of the target (left or right) irrespective of its location (left or right). The results showed that the social gaze targets (i.e., human and cat gaze) produced a reversed congruency effect. In contrast to the social gaze targets, the non-social gaze (i.e., fish and robot) target did not produce the reversed congruency effect (Experiments 2, 2B, 3, and 4). These results suggest that attention to the gaze of socially communicable beings (i.e., humans and cats) is responsible for the reversed congruency effect. Our findings support the notion that the theory of mind or social interaction plays an important role in producing specific attentional processes in response to gaze stimuli.