The attracting power of the gaze of politicians is modulated by the personality and ideological attitude of their voters: an fMRI study.

Eur J Neurosci. 2015 Aug 11;

Authors: Cazzato V, Liuzza MT, Caprara GV, Macaluso E, Aglioti SM

Abstract
Observing someone rapidly moving their eyes induces reflexive shifts of overt and covert attention in the onlooker. Previous studies have shown that this process can be modulated by the onlookers' personality, as well as by the social features of the person depicted in the cued-face. Here, we investigated whether individual's preference for social dominance orientation (SDO), in-group perceived similarity (PS), and political affiliation of the cued-face modulate neural activity within specific nodes of the social attention network. During fMRI, participants were requested to perform a gaze-following task to investigate whether the directional gaze of various Italian political personages may influence the oculomotor behaviour of in-group or out-group voters. After scanning, we acquired measures of PS in personality traits with each political personage and preference for SDO. Behavioural data showed that higher gaze interference for in-group than out-group political personages was predicted by higher preference for social hierarchy. Higher BOLD activity in incongruent vs. congruent conditions was found in areas associated with orienting to socially salient events and monitoring response conflict, namely the left Frontal Eye Field (lFEF), the right Supramarginal Gyrus, the Mid-cingulate Cortex and left Anterior Insula. Interestingly, higher ratings of PS with the in-group and less preference for social hierarchy predicted increased activity in the lFEF during distracting gaze movements of in-group as compared to out-group political personages. Our results suggest that neural activity in the social orienting circuit are modulated by higher-order social dimensions like in-group perceived similarity and individual differences in ideological attitudes. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

PMID: 26262561 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]