The attractiveness of face cues does not modulate the gaze cuing effect

Abstract

ABSTRACT The gaze cuing effect refers to the finding that participants are faster to respond to a stimulus preceded by a face gazing towards the stimulus location compared to when a stimulus is preceded by a face gazing away from the stimulus location. This effect is found even when the gaze direction is not informative of the upcoming stimulus location, suggesting the operation of a fast, reflexive process that draws attention. However, accumulating evidence suggests that this gaze cuing effect is modulated by additional contextual features including characteristics of the face stimulus. In the current set of experiments, we sought to test whether the attractiveness of the face cue is one such factor. Across three experiments, we found no evidence that attractiveness impacts the gaze cuing effect. We interpret these findings to mean that perceived attractiveness is not a contextual feature that modulates the impact of gaze on spatial attention.