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The politics of attention contextualized: gaze but not arrow cuing of attention is moderated by political temperament

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Abstract

It is known that an averted gaze can trigger shifts of attention in an observer, a phenomenon known as gaze-cuing effect. Recently, Dodd et al. (Atten Percept Psychophys 73:24–29, 2011) have reported a reliable gaze-cuing effect for liberals but not for conservatives. The present study tested whether this result is gaze-specific or extends over nonsocial spatial signals. Conservatives and liberals took part in a spatial-cuing task in which centrally placed gaze and arrow cues, pointing rightward or leftward, were followed by a peripheral onset target requiring a simple detection response. Whereas a reliable cuing effect was present for both gaze and arrow cues in the case of liberals, conservatives showed a reduced cuing response only for gaze cues. These results provide further support for the pattern reported by Dodd et al. (2011) and are consistent with the view that conservatives are less susceptible to the influence of spatial cues provided by other individuals.

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Fig. 1
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Notes

  1. Because the two groups of liberals and conservatives differed in size, we tried to test whether the assignment of the three respondents with the median score to the ideology questionnaire to the group of liberals might have somehow affected the results. To this aim, a further mixed model ANOVA with cue–target spatial congruency (congruent vs. incongruent), cue type (arrow vs. gaze), SOA (200 vs. 700 ms), and political ideology (liberal vs. conservative) was conducted on mean RTs after classifying the three respondents as conservatives. Importantly, the four-way cue–target spatial congruency × cue type × SOA × political ideology interaction was still significant, F(1,66) = 5.008, p = .029, \(\eta_{p}^{2}\) = .071. This pattern suggests that assigning respondents scoring around the median value to one group rather than the other did not affect the results. In addition, in order to clarify the robustness of the observed pattern, we also adopted a different strategy by considering ideology as a continuous variable. To this end, mean RTs were submitted to an ANCOVA with cue–target spatial congruency, cue, and SOA as within-participant factors, and political ideology as covariate. Critically, the four-way cue–target spatial congruency × cue type × SOA × political ideology interaction was statistically significant, F(1,66) = 4.364, p = .041, η 2 p  = .062.

  2. The difference in the gaze-cuing effect (i.e., RTs incongruent–RTs congruent) displayed by conservatives and liberals at the 700-ms SOA was further analyzed through an independent sample t test. The difference in gaze-cuing between the two groups fell short of significance, t(66) = 1.713, p = .09. Indeed, there was an 8-ms effect in the case of liberals, whereas the effect only amounted to 2 ms in the case of conservatives.

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Acknowledgments

The first two authors contributed equally, with first authorship being determined by a coin toss. The present research was financially supported by the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research (Futuro in Ricerca 2012, Grants RBFR12F0BD and RBFR128CR6).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Psicologia dello Sviluppo e della Socializzazione, Università degli Studi di Padova, Via Venezia 8, 35131, Padua, Italy

    Luciana Carraro, Mario Dalmaso, Luigi Castelli & Giovanni Galfano

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  1. Luciana Carraro
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  2. Mario Dalmaso
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  3. Luigi Castelli
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  4. Giovanni Galfano
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Correspondence to Mario Dalmaso.

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Carraro, L., Dalmaso, M., Castelli, L. et al. The politics of attention contextualized: gaze but not arrow cuing of attention is moderated by political temperament. Cogn Process 16, 309–314 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-015-0661-5

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