Violence reduces attention to faces and draws attention to points of contact.

ABSTRACT: Although violence is a frequently researched topic, little is known about how different social features influence information gathering from violent interactions. Regions of an interaction that provide contextual information should receive more attention. We predicted the most informative features of a violent social interaction would be faces, points of contact, and objects being held. To test this, we tracked the eyes of 90 participants as they viewed images of social interactions that varied with respect to violence. When viewing violent interactions, participants attended significantly less to faces and significantly more to points of contact. Moreover, first-fixation analysis suggests that some of these biases are present from the beginning of scene-viewing. These findings are the fir

SUBMITTER: Scrivner C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6883035 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature