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.