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Social Attention, Social Presence, and the Dual Function of Gaze

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The Many Faces of Social Attention

Abstract

Research on human attention has traditionally been limited to rather spartan laboratory investigations. In the present chapter, recent work that has introduced an element of complexity to this picture, by examining how social stimuli and social contexts influence attention (i.e., social attention research), is reviewed. Evidence demonstrating that staple social attentional phenomena can change drastically under different social conditions (e.g., looking at images of people vs. real people) is taken to suggest a need to consider more seriously the interaction between social presence and social attention. Research on social presence, both real and implied, is briefly reviewed, and recent work directly investigating the influence of social presence on gaze behavior and the implications of this work for understanding social attention are discussed.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of British Columbia, 2136 West Mall, V6T 1Z4, Vancouver, BC, Canada

    Eleni Nasiopoulos

  2. Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, PAS Building, Room 4010, 200 University Avenue West, N2L 3G1, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    Evan F. Risko

  3. Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, V6T 1Z4, Vancouver, BC, Canada

    Alan Kingstone

Authors
  1. Eleni Nasiopoulos
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  2. Evan F. Risko
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  3. Alan Kingstone
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Correspondence to Alan Kingstone .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Psychological and Brain Sciences, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, USA

    Aina Puce

  2. Psychological and Brain Sciences, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, USA

    Bennett I. Bertenthal

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Nasiopoulos, E., Risko, E., Kingstone, A. (2015). Social Attention, Social Presence, and the Dual Function of Gaze. In: Puce, A., Bertenthal, B. (eds) The Many Faces of Social Attention. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21368-2_5

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