Elsevier

Acta Psychologica

Volume 160, September 2015, Pages 170-177
Acta Psychologica

Eyes keep watch over you! Competition enhances joint attention in females

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2015.07.013Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Outcomes of prior interactions with an individual modulate the gaze-cuing effect.

  • Competition enhances the gaze-cuing effect in low and average competitive females.

  • Attention is biased towards those individuals that are relevant for goal attainment.

Abstract

The present study investigated if the gaze-cuing effect (i.e., the tendency for observers to respond faster to targets in locations that were cued by others' gaze direction than to not-cued targets) is modulated by the type of relationship (i.e., cooperative or competitive) established during a previous interaction with a cuing face. In two experiments, participants played a series of single-shot games of a modified version of the two-choice Prisoner's Dilemma against eight simulated contenders. They were shown a fictive feedback indicating if the opponents chose to cooperate or compete with them. Opponents' faces were then used as stimuli in a standard gaze-cuing task. In Experiment 1 females classified as average in competitiveness were tested, while in Experiment 2 females classified as high and low in competitiveness were tested. We found that only in females classified as low and average in competitiveness the gaze-cuing effect for competitive contenders was greater than for cooperative contenders. These findings suggest that competitive opponents represent a relevant source of information within the social environment and female observers with low and average levels of competition cannot prevent from keeping their eyes over them.

Introduction

Orienting attention in the same direction where other individuals are looking at, known as joint attention, is a foundational ability guiding social interactions and communication (Langton, Watt, & Bruce, 2000). The gaze-mediated orienting of attention allows the observer to infer other people's mental states (i.e., the focus of their attention; e.g. Baron-Cohen, 1995), and to understand and predict their future actions (e.g., Innocenti et al., 2012, Pierno et al., 2006).

Even though there are several indications of the automatic and reflexive nature of the mechanisms underlying the gaze-mediated orienting of attention (e.g., Galfano et al., 2012, Hayward and Ristic, 2013; but see Frischen, Bayliss, & Tipper, 2007 for a review), recent studies suggested that joint attention orienting may not be purely bottom-up driven, but it is rather influenced by top-down processes that interpret the averted gaze based on its relevance for the task (e.g., Ricciardelli, Carcagno, Vallar, & Bricolo, 2013), and in comparison to other stimuli in the environment (e.g., Greene et al., 2009, Ristic and Kingstone, 2005).

Furthermore, there are recent reports that joint attention is influenced by implicit and explicit social information associated to the seen person, such as age (Ciardo, Marino, Actis-Grosso, Rossetti, & Ricciardelli, 2014), facial emotional expression (e.g., Bonifacci, Ricciardelli, Lugli, & Pellicano, 2008), gender (Ohlsen, van Zoest, & van Vugt, 2013), race (Pavan, Dalmaso, Galfano, & Castelli, 2011), social status (e.g., Dalmaso, Pavan, Castelli, & Galfano, 2012) and political affiliation (Liuzza et al., 2011). For instance, Liuzza et al. (2011), using an oculomotor task, reported that political affiliation enhanced joint attention for in-group voters while it inhibited it for out-group voters. Similar results have been reported by Pavan et al. (2011) who investigated the impact of racial group membership on covert orienting of joint attention and reported that White participants selectively shifted their attention in response to the averted gaze of own-race individuals only. Therefore, person categorization seems to regulate joint attention.

The way we perceive and categorize others may depend on the type of relationship we have with them. Group membership acts as a strong categorization cue. There are indications that the need to cooperate or to compete leads to in-group/out-group differentiations, with individuals perceiving themselves as part of the same social group when they need to cooperate with each other. On the contrary, when the others represent an obstacle toward the attainment of a goal, they are more likely perceived as out-group members (e.g., Rabbie & Horwitz, 1969). In general, competitive interactions have been shown to increase perceived intergroup and interpersonal differences (e.g., Toma, Yzerbyt, & Corneille, 2010) and to disrupt the emergence of shared task representations in joint action (e.g., Iani, Anelli, Nicoletti, Arcuri, & Rubichi, 2011). Interestingly, the effects of competition may be long lasting and transfer from one task to a subsequent one (e.g., Iani et al., 2014, Sassenberg et al., 2007).

To note, competitors are a special kind of out-group members as the achievement of their goals often coincides with the impossibility to reach ours. For these reasons, in competitive situations it appears fundamental for the observer to monitor their progress toward their goals (Poortvliet & Darnon, 2010). Evidence indicates that social interactions characterized by cooperation differently affect individual cognitive processes, such as attention, face recognition and memory, with faces of non-cooperative individuals attracting more automatic attention (e.g., Vanneste, Verplaetse, Van Hiel, & Braeckman, 2007) and being memorized more accurately (e.g., Chiappe et al., 2004, Mealy et al., 1996, Oda, 1997, Yamagishi et al., 2003) than those of cooperative individuals.

Given the above considerations, the present study aimed to better clarify how social information, in particular person categorization, influences joint attention. Since previous studies indicated that females show stronger gaze cuing effects (Bayliss, Di Pellegrino, & Tipper, 2005) and higher sensibility to social cues (e.g., Deaner, Shepherd, & Platt, 2007; see Geary, 2010 for a review) than males, to avoid additional sources of variability in the data, only female participants were included in the present study (see Bayliss, Schuch, & Tipper, 2010). Specifically, we run two experiments to investigate whether the gaze-cuing effect is modulated by the cooperative and competitive behavior associated to a cuing face during a prior interaction. In Experiment 1, we included only individuals classified as average in competition, as measured through the Competitiveness Index Questionnaire developed by Smither and Houston (1992). In Experiment 2, participants rated as high and low in competitiveness were included.

In both experiments, we employed a standard gaze-cuing paradigm (Driver et al., 1999) and manipulated the relationship between the participant and the cuing faces via a preliminary learning phase in which participants associated faces of simulated opponents with a cooperative or competitive behavior. In this phase, participants were required to play a series of single-shot games of a modified version of the two-choice Prisoner's Dilemma against eight simulated contenders. After participants had indicated their response at the social dilemma game, they were shown a fictive feedback indicating if the opponents chose to cooperate or compete with them. Opponents' faces were then used as stimuli in the subsequent standard gaze-cuing task.

Section snippets

Experiment 1

The present experiment aimed at investigating whether the gaze-cuing effect (i.e., the tendency for observers to respond faster to targets in locations that were cued by others' gaze direction than to not-cued targets) is modulated by the type of relationship (i.e., cooperative or competitive) established during a previous interaction with a cuing face. Since individuals' competitiveness levels may affect how situations and others are perceived (e.g., Houston, Kinnie, Lupo, Terry, & Ho, 2000),

Experiment 2

The results of Experiment 1 indicate that females characterized by an average level of competition are more likely to orient their attention in the same gaze direction of faces that during a prior interaction were associated with a competitive behavior. Since only average competitive females were tested, it is not possible to assess whether this result represents a consistent behavior within the female population or rather is influenced by the competitiveness level displayed by participants, as

General discussion

The results of the present study demonstrate that the type of relationship (i.e., cooperative or competitive) established during a previous interaction with a cuing face can modulate the gaze-cuing effect in female participants characterized by low and average levels of competition, who oriented their attention in the same gaze direction of faces that during the social dilemma were associated with a competitive behavior, irrespective of their gender. Differently, females characterized by a high

Funding

PR was supported by a grant from Università di Milano — Bicocca (Fondo di Ateneo 2012).

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