Humans are highly social beings who are interested in what others are saying, thinking, and doing. A recent study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences finds that we can easily tell whether a person’s pattern of attention is natural or artificially manipulated

Gueguen, Margot

Lockwood, Patricia L.

English

University of Birmingham Research Portal

  University of BirminghamSocial psychologyGueguen, Margot; Lockwood, Patricia L.DOI:10.1038/s44271-023-00037-6License:Creative Commons: Attribution (CC BY)Document VersionPublisher's PDF, also known as Version of recordCitation for published version (Harvard):Gueguen, M & Lockwood, PL 2023, 'Social psychology: Predicting other people’s attention to understand theirmind', Communications Psychology, vol. 1, no. 1, 36. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44271-023-00037-6Link to publication on Research at Birmingham portalGeneral rightsUnless a licence is specified above, all rights (including copyright and moral rights) in this document are retained by the authors and/or thecopyright holders. The express permission of the copyright holder must be obtained for any use of this material other than for purposespermitted by law.•Users may freely distribute the URL that is used to identify this publication.•Users may download and/or print one copy of the publication from the University of Birmingham research portal for the purpose of privatestudy or non-commercial research.•User may use extracts from the document in line with the concept of ‘fair dealing’ under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (?)•Users may not further distribute the material nor use it for the purposes of commercial gain.Where a licence is displayed above, please note the terms and conditions of the licence govern your use of this document.When citing, please reference the published version.Take down policyWhile the University of Birmingham exercises care and attention in making items available there are rare occasions when an item has beenuploaded in error or has been deemed to be commercially or otherwise sensitive.If you believe that this is the case for this document, please contact UBIRA@lists.bham.ac.uk providing details and we will remove access tothe work immediately and investigate.Download date: 10. Jan. 2024RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTSocial psychology: Predicting other people’sattention to understand their mindHumans are highly social beings who are interested in what others are saying, thinking, and doing. A recent study in theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences finds that we can easily tell whether a person’s pattern of attention is natural orartificially manipulated.Credit: On the couch, 1885–1890, Federico Zandomeneghi. Photo: Alamy.In our day-to-day lives, we tend to spend a lot of time figuringout what’s going on in other people’s minds. This is known as“theory of mind” and may be unique to humans. Some disorderscan disrupt this ability, resulting in impaired social behaviour.Previous research has focused on how we pay attention to whereother people are looking, but it did not consider how we use thisinformation to predict their actions or thoughts.A new study by Ziman and colleagues at Princeton Universityargues that rather than simply monitoring where others gaze,humans use this information to understand their minds1. Theauthors asked 118 participants across 8 experiments to watchmovies of a bright spot navigating around a scene based on thegaze patterns of prior participants. On each trial, participantswere asked to differentiate between a natural gaze sequence and asequence which was artificially manipulated. Depending on theexperiment, the artificial sequence may have been scrambled,backwards, mirrored, or on the wrong background image. Naturaland artificial sequences where the bright spot navigated aroundblank backgrounds were also compared. In nearly all cases, par-ticipants could distinguish between real and artificial movements.They could even distinguish between the gaze patterns of twodifferent individuals.This ability to understand others based on where they look isimportant. It fits with recent work suggesting that there may bespecific brain areas for monitoring other people’s motivation. Italso aligns with studies in non-human animals showing a strongneural response when two individuals make eye contact duringsocial interactions. The next step is to test how differences in thisability relate to differences in behaviour, such as when peopleengage in real-life social interaction and need to understandothers’ thoughts and motivations. Answering these questions willbe essential for helping those who struggle with theory of mindand solving complex global challenges that rely on understandingand cooperating with other people.Margot Gueguen1 & Patricia L. Lockwood1✉1 Centre for Human Brain Health, University of Birmingham,Birmingham, UK.✉email: p.l.lockwood@bham.ac.ukReference1. Ziman, K., Kimmel, S. C., Farrell, K. T. & Graziano, M. S. Predicting theattention of others. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 120, e2307584120 (2023).Competing interestsThe authors declare no competing interests.Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative CommonsAttribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing,adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you giveappropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the CreativeCommons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third partymaterial in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unlessindicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in thearticle’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutoryregulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly fromthe copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.© The Author(s) 2023https://doi.org/10.1038/s44271-023-00037-6 OPENCOMMUNICATIONS PSYCHOLOGY |            (2023) 1:36 | https://doi.org/10.1038/s44271-023-00037-6 | www.nature.com/commspsychol 11234567890():,;

Social psychology:Predicting other people’s attention to understand their mind

  University of BirminghamSocial psychologyGueguen, Margot; Lockwood, Patricia L.DOI:10.1038/s44271-023-00037-6License:Creative Commons: Attribution (CC BY)Document VersionPublisher's PDF, also known as Version of recordCitation for published version (Harvard):Gueguen, M & Lockwood, PL 2023, 'Social psychology: Predicting other people’s attention to understand theirmind', Communications Psychology, vol. 1, no. 1, 36. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44271-023-00037-6Link to publication on Research at Birmingham portalGeneral rightsUnless a licence is specified above, all rights (including copyright and moral rights) in this document are retained by the authors and/or thecopyright holders. The express permission of the copyright holder must be obtained for any use of this material other than for purposespermitted by law.•Users may freely distribute the URL that is used to identify this publication.•Users may download and/or print one copy of the publication from the University of Birmingham research portal for the purpose of privatestudy or non-commercial research.•User may use extracts from the document in line with the concept of ‘fair dealing’ under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (?)•Users may not further distribute the material nor use it for the purposes of commercial gain.Where a licence is displayed above, please note the terms and conditions of the licence govern your use of this document.When citing, please reference the published version.Take down policyWhile the University of Birmingham exercises care and attention in making items available there are rare occasions when an item has beenuploaded in error or has been deemed to be commercially or otherwise sensitive.If you believe that this is the case for this document, please contact UBIRA@lists.bham.ac.uk providing details and we will remove access tothe work immediately and investigate.Download date: 05. Feb. 2024RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTSocial psychology: Predicting other people’sattention to understand their mindHumans are highly social beings who are interested in what others are saying, thinking, and doing. A recent study in theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences finds that we can easily tell whether a person’s pattern of attention is natural orartificially manipulated.Credit: On the couch, 1885–1890, Federico Zandomeneghi. Photo: Alamy.In our day-to-day lives, we tend to spend a lot of time figuringout what’s going on in other people’s minds. This is known as“theory of mind” and may be unique to humans. Some disorderscan disrupt this ability, resulting in impaired social behaviour.Previous research has focused on how we pay attention to whereother people are looking, but it did not consider how we use thisinformation to predict their actions or thoughts.A new study by Ziman and colleagues at Princeton Universityargues that rather than simply monitoring where others gaze,humans use this information to understand their minds1. Theauthors asked 118 participants across 8 experiments to watchmovies of a bright spot navigating around a scene based on thegaze patterns of prior participants. On each trial, participantswere asked to differentiate between a natural gaze sequence and asequence which was artificially manipulated. Depending on theexperiment, the artificial sequence may have been scrambled,backwards, mirrored, or on the wrong background image. Naturaland artificial sequences where the bright spot navigated aroundblank backgrounds were also compared. In nearly all cases, par-ticipants could distinguish between real and artificial movements.They could even distinguish between the gaze patterns of twodifferent individuals.This ability to understand others based on where they look isimportant. It fits with recent work suggesting that there may bespecific brain areas for monitoring other people’s motivation. Italso aligns with studies in non-human animals showing a strongneural response when two individuals make eye contact duringsocial interactions. The next step is to test how differences in thisability relate to differences in behaviour, such as when peopleengage in real-life social interaction and need to understandothers’ thoughts and motivations. Answering these questions willbe essential for helping those who struggle with theory of mindand solving complex global challenges that rely on understandingand cooperating with other people.Margot Gueguen1 & Patricia L. Lockwood1✉1 Centre for Human Brain Health, University of Birmingham,Birmingham, UK.✉email: p.l.lockwood@bham.ac.ukReference1. Ziman, K., Kimmel, S. C., Farrell, K. T. & Graziano, M. S. Predicting theattention of others. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 120, e2307584120 (2023).Competing interestsThe authors declare no competing interests.Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative CommonsAttribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing,adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you giveappropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the CreativeCommons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third partymaterial in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unlessindicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in thearticle’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutoryregulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly fromthe copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.© The Author(s) 2023https://doi.org/10.1038/s44271-023-00037-6 OPENCOMMUNICATIONS PSYCHOLOGY |            (2023) 1:36 | https://doi.org/10.1038/s44271-023-00037-6 | www.nature.com/commspsychol 11234567890():,;

https://pure-oai.bham.ac.uk/ws/files/213804398/44271_2023_Article_37.pdf

Social psychology:Predicting other people’s attention to understand their mind

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

University of Birmingham Research Portal

University of Birmingham Research Portal