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Seeing a face gaze at an object elicits rapid attention shifts toward the same object. We tested whether gaze cueing is predictive: do people shift their attention toward objects others are merely expected to look at? Participants categorized objects while a face either looked at this object, at another object, or straight ahead. Unbeknownst to participants, one face would only look at drinks and the other at foods. We tested whether attention was drawn toward objects “favored” by a face even when currently looking straight ahead. Indeed, while gaze expectations initially had a disruptive effect, participants did shift attention to the faces’ favored objects once learning had been established, as long as emotional expressions had indicated personal relevance of the object to the individual. These data support predictive models of social perception, which assume that predictions can drive perception and action, as if these stimuli were directly perceived.

Merely viewing the faces of famous athletes affects the observers' motor system, suggesting that action-based information is a core feature of person representations, even when no specific action is visible (Bach & Tipper, 2006). Unexpectedly, these person-based motor priming effects were inhibitory. Foot responses were slower when identifying footballers, and hand responses for tennis players. Here, we demonstrate that these inhibitory effects are only evoked when action is implicitly associated with the athletes; when the athletes are seen performing their skilled actions the effect reverses towards facilitation. The contrast between inhibition evoked by implicit action priming and facilitation evoked by the explicit presentation of an action supports the notion of inhibitory control in the motor system. We hypothesise that when no specific action is perceived, a range of actions are activated triggering lateral inhibition, whereas when a specific action is viewed, there is no competition and excitation facilitates similar responses.