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BC Jones, LM DeBruine, JC Main, AC Little, LLM Welling, DR Feinberg & BP Tiddeman (2010). Facial cues of dominance modulate the short-term gaze-cuing effect in human observers. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B. 277(1681) 617-624.
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. |
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