Gazing left, gazing right: exploring a spatial bias in social attention

PeerJ

article

Mario Dalmaso¹  Giacomo Fedrigo¹  Michele Vicovaro² 

[1] Department of Developmental and Social Psychology, University of Padua;Department of General Psychology, University of Padua

关键词: Social attention;    Social cognition;    Visual attention;    Spatial bias;   

DOI  :  10.7717/peerj.15694

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Inra

【 摘 要 】

Faces oriented rightwards are sometimes perceived as more dominant than faces oriented leftwards. In this study, we explored whether faces oriented rightwards can also elicit increased attentional orienting. Participants completed a discrimination task in which they were asked to discriminate, by means of a keypress, a peripheral target. At the same time, a task-irrelevant face oriented leftwards or rightwards appeared at the centre of the screen. The results showed that, while for faces oriented rightwards targets appearing on the right were responded to faster as compared to targets appearing on the left, for faces oriented leftwards no differences emerged between left and right targets. Furthermore, we also found a negative correlation between the magnitude of the orienting response elicited by the faces oriented leftwards and the level of conservatism of the participants. Overall, these findings provide evidence for the existence of a spatial bias reflected in social orienting.

【 授权许可】

CC BY