The impact of perceived social power and dangerous context on social attention

Abstract

Past research has shown that position in a social hierarchy modulates one's social attention, as in the gaze cueing effect. While studies have manipulated the social status of others with whom the participants interact, we believe that a sense of one's own social power is also a crucial factor affecting gaze following. In two experiments, we primed the social power of participants, using different approaches, to investigate the participants' performance in a subsequent gaze cueing task. The results of Experiment 1 showed a stronger gaze cueing effect among participants who were primed with low social power, compared to those primed with high social power. Our predicted gender difference (i.e., women showing a stronger gaze cueing effect than men) was confirmed and this effect was found to be dominated by the lower social power condition. Experiment 2 manipulated the level of danger in the context and replicated the joint impact of gender and one's perceived social power on gaze cueing effect, especially in the low danger context, in comparison to the high danger context. These findings demonstrate that one's perceived social power has a concerted effect on social attention evoked by gaze, along with other factors such as gender and characteristics of the environment, and suggest the importance of further research on the complex relationship between an individual's position in the social hierarchy and social attention.