Dalmaso, M. , Pavan, G. , Castelli, L. & Galfano, G.
D.P.S.S., University of Padova, Padova, Italy
Humans tend to shift attention in response to the averted gaze of a face they are fixating, a phenomenon known as gaze-mediated orienting. In the present study, we aimed to address the extent to which the social status of the cuing face could modulate this phenomenon. Participants were asked to look at the faces of sixteen individuals and read a fake CV associated to each of them that could describe the person as high or low status. The association between each specific face and either high or low social status was counterbalanced between participants. The same faces were then used as cuing faces in a gaze-cuing task. The results showed a significant gaze-cuing effect for high-status faces but not for low-status faces, independently of the specific identity of the face. These findings confirm previous evidence regarding the important role of social factors in shaping social attention. Moreover, differently from previous research which manipulated facial features and physiognomic traits of the cuing faces, here we show that a modulation of gaze-mediated orienting can be observed even when social information are explicitly associated to an individual.