Status lies in the eye of the beholder: Evidence from eye-tracking data

Using eye-tracking methodology, the current study investigates how people look at faces in the context of a social hierarchy. The first goal of the study was to characterize how participants distribute their attentional resources to a set of faces displayed on a vertical hierarchical scale including three social ranks (high, middle and low). In the first phase of the experiment, participants had to learn a hierarchy based on performance in competitive games. The participants’ rank, the other players’ rank, and the spatial orientation of the scale (highest social rank at the top of the vertical scale vs. highest social rank at the bottom) were manipulated. The results revealed that participants looked more at other players who occupy the highest than the lowest social rank but did not look more at another player who was ranked higher than lower than themselves when that player was in the middle position. Hence, participants were more sensitive to the highest vs. lowest rank contrast than to the higher vs. lower rank contrast. The results also revealed an influence of spatial orientation of the scale: less visual attention was allocated to the highest-ranking players when they appeared at the bottom than at the top of the spatial scale. The second goal of the study was to investigate how participants explored the face of each player. This was addressed in the second phase of the experiment, in which participants were presented with each player’s face individually. The results did not show any effect of players’ rank but revealed that in some circumstances, participants in the higher-ranking position were less likely to allocate visual resources to other players.