Eyes are psychologically privileged over faces in attention

Evidence

Kevin Haley and Dan Fessler put this idea to a strong test. They wanted to go beyond previous experiments on lack of anonymity and repeated interactions and show that even subtle cues of being watched are enough to elicit nice behavior. It should be possible to “trick” the powerful and automatic gaze detection mechanism by exposing people to drawings that mimic the presence of human gaze. In the first stage of their experiment, they covertly exposed some US participants to drawings of human eyes masquerading as an ordinary computer screensaver, while others in the control group saw a screensaver with no stimuli or irrelevant stimuli unrelated to eyes. Then in the second stage, which participants thought was an unrelated experiment, they played a version of the one-shot Dictator Game (similar to the one used by Zhong and colleagues, discussed earlier). In this game, everyone was given a certain amount of money and had the opportunity to transfer any portion of the money to a stranger who was unable to retaliate, and was kept anonymous from the participant. There was a 55 percent increase in generosity after exposure to human eyes. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 89 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

Related

• Merely depicting eyes increases generosity by 55 percent (similarity 0.89)
• Subtle cues of being watched increase generosity by 55 percent. (similarity 0.89)
• Minimal eye-like dot patterns activate face recognition and curb selfishness (similarity 0.84)
• Even three dots suggesting eyes reduce selfish behavior in economic games. (similarity 0.81)
• Eye detection is an ancient, automatic evolutionary adaptation for reputation monitoring (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Merely depicting eyes increases generosity by 55 percent #corroborates (0.85) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 89
• Colonial knowing relied on inattention and adverted gazes more than surveillance #complicates (0.75)