title: The power of subliminal and supraliminal eye contact on social decision making: An individual-difference perspective.
abstract: We conducted two experiments to explore how social decision making is influenced by the interaction of eye contact and social value orientation (SVO). Specifically, participants with a Prosocial (Prosocials) or a Proself (Proselfs) SVO played Prisoner Dilemma games with a computer partner following supraliminal (Experiment 1) and subliminal (Experiment 2) direct gaze from that partner. Results showed that participants made more cooperative decisions after supraliminal eye contact than no eye contact, and the effect only existed for the Prosocials but not for the Proselfs. Nevertheless, when the computer partner made a subliminal eye contact with the participants, although more cooperative choices were found among the Prosocials following subliminal eye contact, relative to no contact, the Proselfs demonstrated reduced cooperation rates. These findings suggest that Prosocials and Proselfs interpreted eye contact in distinct ways at different levels of awareness, which led to various social decision making.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology and Beijing Key Laboratory of Behavior and Mental Health, Peking University, Beijing 100871, PR China.
authors.forename: Yiqi
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Luo
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, Whitewater, WI 53190, USA.
authors.forename: Shen
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology and Beijing Key Laboratory of Behavior and Mental Health, Peking University, Beijing 100871, PR China.
authors.forename: Ran
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Tao
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology and Beijing Key Laboratory of Behavior and Mental Health, Peking University, Beijing 100871, PR China. Electronic address: hygeng@pku.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Haiyan
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Geng
mesh_terms: D003299:Cooperative Behavior; D003657:Decision Making; D006801:Humans; D007206:Individuality; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D012938:Social Perception; D013360:Subliminal Stimulation
keywords: Eye contact; Social decision making; Social value orientation; Subliminal; Supraliminal