Subjects: Psychology >> Experimental Psychology submitted time 2023-08-24
Abstract： The babyface effect plays an important role in human social cognitive responses to others. It has been shown that the babyface effect coexists with gender, context, and other factors in trait inferences, and together they influence people's perceptions of and interactions with others. In addition, the eyeTUNE framework proposes the key hypothesis that the moderating role of social factors on gaze cueing effects (GCE) further depends on contextual factors. However, as an important information in social interactions, whether and how babyface co-influence social attention with other factors needs to be further explored. Based on the existing studies, we have two experimental hypotheses. First, we hypothesized that female with babyfaces and male with mature faces would elicit greater GCE. Second, we hypothesized that, consistent with the eyeTUNE framework, the babyface effect disappears or diminishes in a non-comparative context.
In the current study, we used attentional cueing paradigm to examine the specific manifestations of the babyface effect in social attention by manipulating different contextual factors. Experiment 1 presented the various types of stimuli in the same block in a comparative context, using a 2 (participant gender: male, female) × 2 (face gender: male, female) × 2 (face type: babyface, mature face) × 2 (gaze cue validity: valid, invalid) mixed experimental design (with participant gender as a between-participants variable) to explore how face type interacts with gender to affect social attention. To investigate whether babyfaces would still have an effect on the GCE when there was no comparative context between babyface and mature face. Experiment 2 presented the four conditions (female babyface, female mature face, male babyface, and male mature face) in a separate block.
The results of Experiment 1 (comparative context) found that gaze cueing effects were moderated by face type and face gender. Specifically, a larger gaze cueing effect was discovered when the cue appeared on the babyfaces compared to the mature faces under female face condition; whereas under male face condition, babyfaces induced smaller gaze cueing effects than mature faces. However, in Experiment 2 (non-comparative context), the pattern of results differed from Experiment 1 in that the gaze cueing effect was no longer moderated by the role of or interaction between face type and face gender, but only by participant gender. A combined comparison of the data from Experiments 1 and 2 revealed statistically significant differences between the patterns under the two contextual factors.
In summary, the present study extends the existing literature in several ways. First, it explores for the first time the role of babyface in GCE under different facial gender. Second, it also reveals the moderating role of contextual factor in individuals' social attentional processing with babyface. The above results illustrate that although male and female babyfaces can cause attentional bias in social interaction, it only exists in the comparative context with mature faces, but not in the non-comparative context. The results of this study further support the theoretical view of the eyeTUNE framework that the social modulation of the gaze cueing effect critically dependents on situational factors.
Peer Review Status:
Awaiting Review
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