title: Social status gates social attention in humans.
abstract: Humans tend to shift attention in response to the averted gaze of a face they are fixating, a phenomenon known as gaze cuing. In the present paper, we aimed to address whether the social status of the cuing face modulates this phenomenon. Participants were asked to look at the faces of 16 individuals and read fictive curriculum vitae associated with each of them that could describe the person as having a high or low social 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 stimuli in a gaze-cuing task. The results showed a greater gaze-cuing effect for high-status faces than 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 and show that a modulation of gaze cuing can be observed even when knowledge about social status is acquired through episodic learning.
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Psicologia dello Sviluppo e della Socializzazione, University of Padova, Padova, Italy. mario.dalmaso@gmail.com
authors.forename: Mario
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Dalmaso
authors.forename: Giulia
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Pavan
authors.forename: Luigi
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Castelli
authors.forename: Giovanni
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Galfano
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D017677:Age Distribution; D001288:Attention; D003463:Cues; D005145:Face; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007558:Italy; D008297:Male; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D012923:Social Class; D012938:Social Perception; D014796:Visual Perception; D055815:Young Adult
references.citation: Dev Sci. 2010 Nov;13(6):913-22
references.pmid: 20977562
references.citation: Front Integr Neurosci. 2010 Mar 19;4:5
references.pmid: 20428494
references.citation: Cognition. 2010 Dec;117(3):319-31
references.pmid: 20965502
references.citation: Biol Lett. 2007 Feb 22;3(1):64-7
references.pmid: 17443967
references.citation: PLoS One. 2011;6(10):e25608
references.pmid: 21991323
references.citation: Behav Brain Sci. 1998 Jun;21(3):353-63; discussion 363-97
references.pmid: 10097017
references.citation: Curr Biol. 2003 Sep 16;13(18):1609-13
references.pmid: 13678591
references.citation: Proc Biol Sci. 2010 Feb 22;277(1681):617-24
references.pmid: 19864283
references.citation: Atten Percept Psychophys. 2009 Feb;71(2):314-27
references.pmid: 19304621
references.citation: Evol Hum Behav. 2001 May;22(3):165-196
references.pmid: 11384884
references.citation: Psychol Bull. 2007 Jul;133(4):694-724
references.pmid: 17592962
references.citation: Curr Biol. 2006 Feb 21;16(4):R119-20
references.pmid: 16488858
references.citation: Pers Soc Psychol Bull. 2011 Aug;37(8):1003-15
references.pmid: 21606215