Perceptual saliency might override gender stereotype attribution in gaze-following behaviour paradigms

Other people’s gaze conveys a plethora of information, and for this reason it is such a strong and automatic attractor for our attention: the tendency to attend to other people’s attention is defined gaze-following behaviour (GFB). Although automatic, the GFB can be suppressed due to social categorization processes, at the cost of delayed reaction times. In regards of automatic categorization, a recent study highlighted the role of second-order facial features (e.g. makeup for women and beard for men), in facilitating the activation of gender stereotypes. From these bases we wanted to explore the GFB paradigm together with different second-order features, to study the role of gender stereotypes in joint attention processes. To achieve this, we modified a set of female and male faces that were manipulated by their second-order features (i.e. hair color, hair length, glasses, makeup/beard). Participants were asked to perform a left or right saccade, according to the instructions received, while a to-be-ignored face (woman or man) gazing either left or right appeared at the centre of the screen. Gaze direction could be either congruent or incongruent with the task. Results confirmed the GFB (more errors in the incongruent condition and slower time-to saccade for correct answer in the incongruent condition) and show a tendency to follow faces with more pronounced second-order features suggesting a prominent role of perceptual saliency overriding gender stereotyping.