Attentional dynamics in a social context: Exploring the interplay between gaze direction and social cognition

The goal of the chapter is to integrate two major lines of research, namely research on basic attention processes and research on social attitudes. As for basic attention processes, we will specifically focus on gaze-mediated orienting, that is the automatic tendency to shift attention toward the location gazed by another person. As for social attitudes, we will focus on racial and gender attitudes as well as on status perception. The integration between these two lines of research will be pursued in two ways. First, we will review the research on the effects of gaze on social attitudes, as, for instance, when and why attitudes toward social objects change as a function of the persons who looks at them and, moreover, we will focus on the role of gaze in the construction of person impression. Next, we will examine the other side of the coin and discuss how the effects of the automatic orientation of attention might be modulated by the attitudes held by the perceiver. Available evidence will be presented as well as possible scenarios for future studies. The idea is that we do not shift attention in response to the gaze of all individuals to the same extent, but we selectively give priority to liked and high-status individuals. This will enable to demonstrate the strict interconnections between basic attention mechanisms and social judgment and to stress their adaptive functions.