Negative gossip sharpens attention

July, 2011

Faces of people about whom something negative was known were perceived more quickly than faces of people about whom nothing, or something positive or neutral, was known.

Here’s a perception study with an intriguing twist. In my recent round-up of perception news I spoke of how images with people in them were more memorable, and of how some images ‘jump out’ at you. This study showed different images to each participant’s left and right eye at the same time, creating a contest between them. The amount of time it takes the participant to report seeing each image indicates the relative priority granted by the brain.

So, 66 college students were shown faces of people, and told something ‘gossipy’ about each one. The gossip could be negative, positive or neutral — for example, the person “threw a chair at a classmate”; “helped an elderly woman with her groceries”; “passed a man on the street.” These faces were then shown to one eye while the other eye saw a picture of a house.

The students had to press one button when they could see a face and another when they saw a house. As a control, some faces were used that the students had never seen. The students took the same length of time to register seeing the unknown faces and those about which they had been told neutral or positive information, but pictures of people about whom they had heard negative information registered around half a second quicker, and were looked at for longer.

A second experiment confirmed the findings and showed that subjects saw the faces linked to negative gossip for longer periods than faces about whom they had heard about upsetting personal experiences.

Reference: 

[2283] Anderson, E., Siegel E. H., Bliss-Moreau E., & Barrett L F.
(2011).  The Visual Impact of Gossip.
Science. 332(6036), 1446 - 1448.

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