The attracting power of the gaze of politicians is modulated by the personality and ideological attitude of their voters: a functional magnetic resonance imaging study.
Observing someone rapidly moving their eyes induces reflexive shifts of overt and covert attention in the onlooker. Previous studies have shown that this process can be modulated by the onlooker's personality, as well as by the social features of the person depicted in the cued face. Here, we investigated whether an individual's preference for social dominance orientation, in-group perceived similarity (PS), and political affiliation of the cued-face modulated neural activity within specific nodes of the social attention network. During functional magnetic resonance imaging, participants were requested to perform a gaze-following task to investigate whether the directional gaze of various Italian political personages might influence the oculomotor behaviour of in-group or out-group voters. After scanning, we acquired measures of PS in personality traits with each political personage and preference for social dominance orientation. Behavioural data showed that higher gaze interference for in-group than out-group political personages was predicted by a higher preference for social hierarchy. Higher blood oxygenation level-dependent activity in incongruent vs. congruent conditions was found in areas associated with orienting to socially salient events and monitoring response conflict, namely the left frontal eye field, right supramarginal gyrus, mid-cingulate cortex and left anterior insula. Interestingly, higher ratings of PS with the in-group and less preference for social hierarchy predicted increased activity in the left frontal eye field during distracting gaze movements of in-group as compared with out-group political personages. Our results suggest that neural activity in the social orienting circuit is modulated by higher-order social dimensions, such as in-group PS and individual differences in ideological attitudes.
Department of Psychology, 'Sapienza' University of Rome, Via dei Marsi 78, 00185, Rome, Italy.|Neuroimaging Laboratory, Santa Lucia Foundation, Rome, Italy.
Valentina
V
Cazzato
Department of Psychology, 'Sapienza' University of Rome, Via dei Marsi 78, 00185, Rome, Italy.|Neuroimaging Laboratory, Santa Lucia Foundation, Rome, Italy.
Marco Tullio
MT
Liuzza
Department of Psychology, 'Sapienza' University of Rome, Via dei Marsi 78, 00185, Rome, Italy.
Gian Vittorio
GV
Caprara
Neuroimaging Laboratory, Santa Lucia Foundation, Rome, Italy.
Emiliano
E
Macaluso
Department of Psychology, 'Sapienza' University of Rome, Via dei Marsi 78, 00185, Rome, Italy.|Neuroimaging Laboratory, Santa Lucia Foundation, Rome, Italy.
Salvatore Maria
SM
Aglioti
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D002560:Cerebrovascular Circulation / Q000502:physiology; D003463:Cues; D053483:Eye Movement Measurements; D005133:Eye Movements / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006126:Group Processes; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D009039:Motion Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010100:Oxygen / Q000097:blood; D010551:Personality / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods; D011057:Politics; D012930:Social Dominance; D055815:Young Adult
D010100:Oxygen
embodied social cognition; frontal eye field; gaze following; ideological attitude; personality traits; political affiliation