Inferences about women’s traits influence the judgment of their eye contact
Manman Zhai, Jari K. Hietanen

TL;DR
This study shows that people's assumptions about a woman's traits affect how they judge whether she is making eye contact with them.
Contribution
The study reveals that inferred social desirability of women influences the perception of their eye contact through a psychological mechanism.
Findings
CoDG width was wider for female faces associated with socially desirable traits.
The effect may be due to approach-related action tendency or self-referential positivity bias.
Trait inference about women's social desirability aligns with stereotypes, enhancing perceived likeability.
Abstract
We investigated whether trait inference about others’ social desirability influences perceivers’ judgments of eye contact with them, measured by the cone of direct gaze (CoDG) width—the range within which slight gaze deviations are perceived as direct. We also explored how the effect is modulated by participants’ gender and gazers’ sex. In Experiment 1, participants read descriptions of a likeable female and an unlikeable male (or vice versa). Subsequently, they judged whether they were being looked at or not by these individuals displaying various gaze directions. In Experiment 2, participants inferred trait desirability and performed eye contact tasks sequentially for two faces of the same sex, either beginning with a likeable face followed by an unlikeable face or vice versa. In Experiment 3, participants first performed eye-contact judgment for an individual without trait…
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Taxonomy
TopicsEvolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior · Face Recognition and Perception · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment
