Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 19, 2026

Eye Tracking During Visually Situated Language Comprehension: Flexibility and Limitations in Uncovering Visual Context Effects
Published on: November 30, 2018
The look of love: gaze shifts and person perception
Malia F Mason1, Elizabeth P Tatkow, C Neil Macrae
1Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Dartmouth College, Moore Hall, Hanover, NH 03755, USA. malia.f.mason@dartmouth.edu
Abstract:
Gaze direction is a vital communicative channel through which people transmit information to each other. By signaling the locus of social attention, gaze cues convey information about the relative importance of objects, including other people, in the environment. For the most part, this information is communicated via patterns of gaze direction, with gaze shifts signaling changes in the objects of attention. Noting the relevance of gaze cues in social cognition, we speculated that gaze shifts may modulate people's evaluations of others. We investigated this possibility by asking participants to judge the likability (Experiment 1) and physical attractiveness (Experiment 2) of targets displaying gaze shifts indicative of attentional engagement or disengagement with the participants. As expected, person evaluation was moderated by the direction of gaze shifts, but only when the judgment under consideration was relevant to participants. We consider how and when gaze shifts may modulate person perception and its associated behavioral products.
Related Concept Videos
The Looking Glass Self
Gestalt Principles of Perception
Understanding Love
Perception
Bottom-up processing begins at the sensory level, where receptors detect external environmental stimuli. These could include the tactile sensation of...
Dark Triad and Person Perception
Perceptual Constancy
Size constancy is the recognition that an object remains the same size, even when its image on the retina changes. For instance, a bus is perceived to be large enough to carry people, even if it looks tiny from...

