I want to help you, but I am not sure why: Gaze-cuing induces altruistic giving

Rogers, Robert D., Bayliss, Andrew P. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4810-7758, Szepietowska, Anna, Dale, Laura, Reeder, Lydia, Pizzamiglio, Gloria, Czarna, Karolina, Wakeley, Judi, Cowen, Phillip J. and Tipper, Steven P. (2014) I want to help you, but I am not sure why: Gaze-cuing induces altruistic giving. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143 (2). pp. 763-777. ISSN 0096-3445

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Abstract

Detecting subtle indicators of trustworthiness is highly adaptive for moving effectively amongst social partners. One powerful signal is gaze direction, which individuals can use to inform (or deceive) by looking toward (or away from) important objects or events in the environment. Here, across 5 experiments, we investigate whether implicit learning about gaze cues can influence subsequent economic transactions; we also examine some of the underlying mechanisms. In the 1st experiment, we demonstrate that people invest more money with individuals whose gaze information has previously been helpful, possibly reflecting enhanced trust appraisals. However, in 2 further experiments, we show that other mechanisms driving this behavior include obligations to fairness or (painful) altruism, since people also make more generous offers and allocations of money to individuals with reliable gaze cues in adapted 1-shot ultimatum games and 1-shot dictator games. In 2 final experiments, we show that the introduction of perceptual noise while following gaze can disrupt these effects, but only when the social partners are unfamiliar. Nonconscious detection of reliable gaze cues can prompt altruism toward others, probably reflecting the interplay of systems that encode identity and control gaze-evoked attention, integrating the reinforcement value of gaze cues.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: This article has been published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Copyright for this article is retained by the author(s). Author(s) grant(s) the American Psychological Association the exclusive right to publish the article and identify itself as the original publisher.
Uncontrolled Keywords: gaze,joint attention,altruism
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Psychology
UEA Research Groups: Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Centres > Centre for Behavioural and Experimental Social Sciences
Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Social Cognition Research Group
Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Cognition, Action and Perception
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Depositing User: Pure Connector
Date Deposited: 22 Oct 2015 14:03
Last Modified: 18 Apr 2023 20:31
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/54780
DOI: 10.1037/a0033677

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