The Effect of Sex and Gender‐Role on Social Attention: Investigating the Association With Social Skills and Academic Preferences

ABSTRACT

The literature has shown that both eye‐gaze and arrow cues elicit quantitatively similar attentional orienting effects. Nonetheless, a qualitative dissociation between the orienting of attention triggered by these two types of stimuli has been observed under specific methodological conditions. It has been found that, while eye‐gaze retains attention at the specific looked‐at location, with arrows attention is spread towards broader parts of the environment. However, to date, it remains unclear whether this dissociation may be directly related to individual differences in personal attributes typically associated with higher or lower social skills. The aim of the present study was to explore whether the orienting effects of eye‐gaze and arrow cues differ among observers based on their sex, gender‐role, academic background and/or social skills. To ensure transparency, the hypotheses and analysis plan for this research were pre‐registered. The results showed that although the anticipated arrow–gaze dissociation and the expected relationships among the measured personal attributes were observed, they did not correlate. However, additional analyses revealed a selective association between gaze–driven attentional effects and autistic traits. Overall, these findings suggest that, under the present methodological approach, differences between eye‐gaze and arrow orienting effects are not uniformly linked to individual differences in social cognition.