I don't need your attention: ostracism can narrow the cone of gaze

Social excluder's face reduces gaze-triggered attention orienting

Social ostracism, a negative affective experience in interpersonal interactions, is thought to modulate the gaze-cueing effect (GCE). However, it is unclear whether the impact of social exclusion on the GCE is related to the identity of the cueing face. Therefore, the present study employed a two-phase paradigm to address this issue. In the first phase, two groups of participants were instructed to complete a Cyberball game with two virtual avatars to establish a binding relationship between a specific face's identity and the emotions of social exclusion or inclusion. In the second phase, these two virtual avatars (exclusion faces/inclusion faces) and two new faces (control faces) were used as cueing faces in the gaze-cueing task. The results found that, for the exclusion group, the magnitudes of the GCEs for the exclusion and exclusion-control faces were similar in the 200 ms stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) condition, while the exclusion face's GCE was significantly smaller than that of the exclusion-control face in the 700 ms SOA condition. In contrast, for the inclusion group, the GCEs for inclusion and inclusion-control faces in both the 200 ms SOA and 700 ms SOA conditions did not significantly differ. This study reveals that the effect of social exclusion on the GCE is related to the identity of the cueing face, with individuals more reluctant to follow the gaze direction of excluder and shift their attention and provides experimental evidence that the perception of higher social relations can exert a top-down impact on the processing of social spatial cues.

Effects of two different social exclusion paradigms on ambiguous facial emotion recognition

Social exclusion is an emotionally painful experience that leads to various alterations in socio-emotional processing. The perceptual and emotional consequences that may arise from experiencing social exclusion can vary depending on the paradigm used to manipulate it. Exclusion paradigms can vary in terms of the severity and duration of the leading exclusion experience, thereby classifying it as either a short-term or long-term experience. The present study aimed to study the impact of exclusion on socio-emotional processing using different paradigms that caused experiencing short-term and imagining long-term exclusion. Ambiguous facial emotions were used as socio-emotional cues. In study 1, the Ostracism Online paradigm was used to manipulate short-term exclusion. In study 2, a new sample of participants imagined long-term exclusion through the future life alone paradigm. Participants of both studies then completed a facial emotion recognition task consisting of morphed ambiguous facial emotions. By means of Point of Subjective Equivalence analyses, our results indicate that the experience of short-term exclusion hinders recognising happy facial expressions. In contrast, imagining long-term exclusion causes difficulties in recognising sad facial expressions. These findings extend the current literature, suggesting that not all social exclusion paradigms affect socio-emotional processing similarly.

Impact of Co-Worker Ostracism on Organizational Citizenship Behavior Through Employee Self-Identity: The Moderating Role of Ethical Leadership

Purpose

Positive interpersonal interactions are indispensable for employees to engage in organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) that benefits teamwork; however, co-worker ostracism triggers interpersonal isolation, inhibiting OCB. This research aims to leverage the intervention of ethical leadership in the ostracism-OCB relationship to moderate the harmful ostracism and promote ostracized employees' OCB through employee self-identity.

Methods

This research chose 122 MBA to participate in Study 1's scenario experiment to verify the causality between variables. Study 2 used 295 valid questionnaires from full-time employees to generalize the experimental results to field settings and compensate for external validity. Two studies used Hayes's conditional process model to test the conditional direct and indirect relationships.

Findings

This research revealed that high levels of ethical leadership effectively transitioned the harmful ostracism and promoted ostracized employees' OCB by satisfying ostracized employees' needs for identity recognition. Accordingly, the direct and indirect effects of co-worker ostracism on OCB through employee self-identity would be positive at high levels of ethical leadership, but negative at low levels.

Originality

This research first introduces an identity perspective on ethical leadership in moderating the ostracism-OCB relationship. Based on the social identity theory of leadership, this research fills the gap in ostracism and OCB research calling for leadership interventions. It extends a novel insight into inspiring ostracized employees' participation in OCB through employee self-identity.

Practical Implications

This research provides the managerial applications of ethical leadership for China organizations to reduce inadvertent inactions, accept employees' identities, and value interpersonal communication for effectively transitioning harmful ostracism.

Perception of eye contact, self-referential thinking and age

Increased thinking about one's self has been proposed to widen the gaze cone, that is, the range of gaze deviations that an observer judges as looking directly at them (eye contact). This study investigated the effects of a self-referential thinking manipulation and demographic factors on the gaze cone. In a preregistered experiment (N = 200), the self-referential thinking manipulation, as compared to a control manipulation, did not influence the gaze cone, or the use of first-person pronouns in a manipulation check measuring self-referential processing. This may indicate a failure of the manipulation and participants' lack of effort. However, participants' age was significantly correlated with both measures: older people had wider gaze cones and used more self-referring pronouns. A second experiment (N = 300) further examined the effect of the manipulation and demographic factors on self-referential processing, and the results were replicated. These findings may reflect age-related self-reference and positivity effects.

A Study of Eye-Tracking Gaze Point Classification and Application Based on Conditional Random Field

The head-mounted eye-tracking technology is often used to manipulate the motion of servo platform in remote tasks, so as to achieve visual aiming of servo platform, which is a highly integrated human-computer interaction effect. However, it is difficult to achieve accurate manipulation for the uncertain meanings of gaze points in eye-tracking. To solve this problem, a method of classifying gaze points based on a conditional random field is proposed. It first describes the features of gaze points and gaze images, according to the eye visual characteristic. An LSTM model is then introduced to merge these two features. Afterwards, the merge features are learned by CRF model to obtain the classified gaze points. Finally, the meaning of gaze point is classified for target, in order to accurately manipulate the servo platform. The experimental results show that the proposed method can classify more accurate target gaze points for 100 images, the average evaluation values Precision = 86.81%, Recall = 86.79%, We = 86.79%, these are better than relevant methods. In addition, the isolated gaze points can be eliminated, and the meanings of gaze points can be classified to achieve the accuracy of servo platform visual aiming.

Seeking Solitude After Being Ostracized: A Replication and Beyond

Individuals may respond to ostracism by either behaving prosocially or antisocially. A recent paper provides evidence for a third response: solitude seeking, suggesting that ostracized individuals may ironically engage in self-perpetuating behaviors which exacerbate social isolation. To examine this counterintuitive response to ostracism, we conceptually replicated the original paper in three studies (N = 1,118). Ostracism experiences were associated with preference for solitude across four samples (Study 1), and being ostracized increased participants’ desires for solitude (Studies 2 and 3). Extending beyond the original paper, we demonstrated that only the experience of being ostracized, but not ostracizing others or the feeling of conspicuousness, triggered the desire for solitude. Diverging from the original paper, trait extraversion did not moderate the effect of ostracism on solitude desires. Taken together, the current research provides additional and stronger empirical evidence that solitude seeking is a common response to ostracism.

Seeing eye-to-eye: Social gaze interactions influence gaze direction identification

We tested whether gaze direction identification of individual faces can be modulated by prior social gaze encounters. In two experiments, participants first completed a joint-gaze learning task using a saccade/antisaccade paradigm. Participants would encounter some ‘joint-gaze faces’ that would consistently look at the participants saccade goal before participants looked there (Experiment 1) or would follow the participants gaze to the target (Experiment 2). ‘Non-joint-gaze faces’ would consistently look in the opposite direction. Participants then completed a second task in which they judged the gaze direction of the faces they had previously encountered. Participants were less likely to erroneously report faces with slightly deviated gaze as looking directly at them if the face had previously never engaged in joint gaze with them. However, this bias was only present when those faces had looked first (Experiment 1) and not when the faces looked after participants (Experiment 2). Comparing these data with gaze identification responses of a control group that did not complete any joint-gaze learning phase revealed that the difference in gaze identification in Experiment 1 is likely driven by a lowering of direct gaze bias in response to non-joint-gaze faces. Thus, previous joint-gaze experiences can affect gaze direction judgements at an identity-specific level. However, this modulation may rely on the socio-cognitive information available from viewing other’s initiation behaviours, especially when they fail to engage in social contact.

Turning Away From Averted Gazes: The Effect of Social Exclusion on Gaze Cueing

Past studies showed increased sensitivity to other people’s gaze after social exclusion. In the present research, across two studies, we tested whether social exclusion could affect the basic cognitive phenomenon of gaze-cueing effect, namely, the tendency to redirect visual attention to the same location that other people are looking at. To this purpose, participants were socially excluded or included using the Cyberball manipulation. In Study 1, after the manipulation, participants performed a gaze-cueing task in which an individual’s gaze, oriented rightward or leftward, preceded a peripheral target stimulus requiring a simple categorization response. The gaze direction could be congruent or incongruent with the location of the target. Results revealed a reduced gaze-cueing effect for socially excluded than for socially included participants. In Study 2, where human gazes were replaced by arrow cues, such an interaction between social exclusion and trial congruency disappeared, indicating a specific effect of social stimuli. We interpreted these findings with the notion that excluded participants can perceive an averted gaze as a further sign of social exclusion, thus showing a reduced gaze-cueing effect.

Differential impact of trait, social, and attachment anxiety on the stare-in-the-crowd effect

Eye gaze conveys crucial information for social interactions, with straight versus averted gaze triggering distinct emotional and cognitive processes. The "stare-in-the-crowd" effect exemplifies such differential visual processing of gaze direction, in more recent reports also in interaction with head orientation. Besides aiming at replicating the "stare-in-the-crowd" effect by means of an eye gaze by head orientation interaction, the present study intended to for the first time testing its susceptibility to inter-individual differences in trait, social, and attachment anxiety. Our findings reveal a significant relation between the "stare-in-the-crowd" effect and social and attachment, but not trait anxiety, and therefore provide preliminary cues for personality influences on visual processing of eye gaze and head orientation.

The effects of social exclusion on processing of social information - A cognitive psychology perspective

In this article, we review the research investigating the effects of social exclusion on processing of social information. We look into this topic from the point of view of cognitive psychology aiming to provide a systematic description of the effects of exclusion on workings of different cognitive mechanisms involved in social information processing. We focus on four lines of inquiry. First, we present the research on the effects of exclusion on memory for social information. Second, we review studies, which have investigated how exclusion changes the way people view and evaluate their social environment. Third, we look into the research which has investigated whether exclusion modulates early social information processing at the perceptual level. Finally, we discuss the research on the effects of exclusion on attentional processes. Importantly, we also present gaps in our understanding on these issues and provide suggestions as to how future research could provide a more detailed view on how exclusion modulates social information processing.

Social inclusion, but not exclusion, delays attentional disengagement from direct gaze

The present study investigated whether another person’s direct gaze holds a perceiver’s visuospatial attention and whether social exclusion or social inclusion would enhance this effect. Participants were socially excluded, socially included, or underwent a non-social control manipulation in a virtual ball-tossing game. The manipulation was followed by an attentional disengagement task, in which we measured manual response times in identification of peripheral stimuli shown to the left or right of centrally presented faces portraying direct or downward gaze. Contrary to our hypotheses, the response times were not, in general, longer for direct gaze trials than downward gaze trials, and exclusion did not increase the delay in direct gaze trials. Instead, we discovered that, in the social inclusion group, the response times were longer for direct gaze trials relative to downward gaze trials. Thus, social inclusion might have activated affiliation-related cognitive processes leading to delayed attentional disengagement from faces cueing affiliation.