image: Participants judged the critical tipping angle of a cylinder when a face was staring at it. view more
Credit: Image courtesy of Arvid Guterstam and Michael Graziano.
Researchers report that perception of forces on an object can be biased by the presence of another person gazing at the object, suggesting that people can form an implicit model of gaze as beams emanating from others' eyes. Though typically dismissed by science, the extramission theory of vision, which involves invisible energy leaving the eyes of an observer, is culturally common, such as when people claim to feel another's gaze. Michael S.A. Graziano and colleagues sought to assess expressions of belief in extramission both unconsciously and explicitly. In a study involving more than 800 participants, the authors asked volunteers to estimate the forces acting on an object and found that the responses were significantly different when a picture of a person was shown looking at the object from when the person pictured was blindfolded, was shown looking away, or when the volunteer was told that the person was attending to a distant wall instead of the object. The results suggest that the volunteers unconsciously assumed that the pictured person's gaze exerted a slight force on the object. According to the authors, though only around 5% of study participants explicitly believed in extramission, the findings suggest that the brain may construct an extramission-style model of the social world, thus influencing perception.
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Article #18-16581: "Implicit model of other people's visual attention as an invisible, force-carrying beam projecting from the eyes," by Arvid Guterstam, Hope Kean, Taylor Webb, Faith Kean, and Michael S.A. Graziano.
MEDIA CONTACT: Michael S.A. Graziano, Princeton University, NJ; tel: 609-258-7555; e-mail: graziano@princeton.edu
Journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences