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gaze cueing
Your attention is wired to follow where others look.
The gaze cueing effect shows that human attention shifts automatically to follow another person's eyes.
Even when a person's gaze provides no information about a target's location, you will still orient your attention toward it within 100 milliseconds. This effect persists even when you are told the person's eyes are unreliable. You are built to track the visual focus of others as a survival mechanism.
You do not consciously choose to look where others look.
Where this comes from
- Study
- Friesen and Kingstone, 1998, Psychonomic Bulletin and Review
- What the check found
- The core claim and source are accurate. The evolutionary justification is standard in the field but is an interpretation, not a direct measurement.
- Confidence
- Well replicated
Related
One of these every day, and every one names the study it came from. When a finding is contested, it says so.