When seeing is more than looking: Intentional gaze modulates object desirability

Manera, Valeria, Elena, Marco R., Bayliss, Andrew P. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4810-7758 and Becchio, Cristina (2014) When seeing is more than looking: Intentional gaze modulates object desirability. Emotion, 14 (4). pp. 824-832. ISSN 1528-3542

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Abstract

Objects in the environment have a perceived value that can be changed through social influence. A subtle way to influence object evaluation is through eye gaze: Objects looked at by others are perceived as more likable than objects that are not looked at. In 3 experiments, we directly tested the hypothesis that this liking effect depends on the processing of the intentional relation between other's eye gaze and the object being looked at. To this end, we used a novel paradigm in which participants observed a face looking left or right behind an opaque barrier. Under all tested conditions, we found a gaze cueing effect on attention: Looked-at objects were categorized faster than looked-away objects. In contrast, observed gaze only led to a boost in affective evaluation for the target object when observers had the impression that the face could see the object behind the barrier, but not when observers had the impression that the face could not see the object. These findings indicate that observers make a sophisticated use of social gaze cues in the affective evaluation of objects: Objects looked at by others are liked more than objects looked away but only when others can see the objects.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved "This article may not exactly replicate the final version published in the APA journal. It is not the copy of record."
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: 19 Apr 2023 00:20
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/54782
DOI: 10.1037/a0036258

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