24/11/2022 – Matthias S. GOBEL

Abstract

Social hierarchy is a driving force of social and organizational life. Hierarchies are critical for social living because they coordinate behaviour in groups. When rank-order order is unclear, life in groups becomes difficult. Here, I present a programme of research that investigated how social hierarchy affords social coordination through the orchestration of visual attention. I will first discuss findings speaking to when and why people change the locus of their attention when looking at higher and lower ranked others, and I will then discuss findings speaking to when and why people change the locus of their attention when looking with them. For example, in joint spatial cueing experiment, I find that social rank changes the allocation of visual attention from very early stages of visual processing in a task-dependent manner. Results consistently suggest that shifting visual attention in social hierarchies – and presumably across social contexts – fulfils a dual function : It gathers information from others, and it signals information back to them. Such social attention might be a key mechanism of interactive social cognition and a useful tool to facilitate interpersonal communication and behavioural coordination.

Relevant Publications

Gobel, M. S., Kim, H. S., & Richardson, D. C. (2015). The Dual Function of Social Gaze. Cognition, 136, 359–364.
Gobel, M. S., Tufft, M. R. A., & Richardson, D. C. (2018). Social Beliefs and Visual Attention : How the Social Relevance of a Cue Influences Spatial Orienting. Cognitive Science, 42, 161–185.
Tufft, M. R., & Gobel, M. S. (2022). Gender and perceived cooperation modulate visual attention in a joint spatial cueing task. Visual Cognition, 30(1-2), 6-27.

Speaker

Matthias S. GOBEL (School of Psychology, University of Sussex)