Thaindian News

Washington, Dec 10 (ANI): It’s common that liberals and conservatives are poles apart. And now, a new study has given another point stating the difference between the two - researchers found that liberals focus their attention on gaze cues much more than conservatives.

‘Gaze cues’ is a person’s tendency to shift attention in a direction consistent with another person’s eye movements, even if it’s irrelevant to their current task.

University of Nebraska-Lincoln researchers measured both liberals’ and conservatives’ reaction to ‘gaze cues’ and found that former responded strongly to the prompts, consistently moving their attention in the direction suggested to them by a face on a computer screen. Conservatives, on the other hand, did not.

“We thought that political temperament may moderate the magnitude of gaze-cuing effects, but we did not expect conservatives to be completely immune to these cues,” said Michael Dodd, a UNL assistant professor of psychology and the lead author of the study.

The liberals’ characteristic of being more responsive to other might have been the reason behind them following the gaze cues, the study suggested.

One of the study’s authors, Kevin Smith said, “Understanding exactly why people have such different political perspectives and where those differences come from may help us better understand the roots of a lot of political conflict,”

The study involved 72 people who sat in front of a white computer screen and were told to fixate on a small black cross in its center. The cross then disappeared and was replaced by a drawing of a face, but with eyes missing their pupils. Then, pupils appeared in the eyes, looking either left or right. Finally, a small, round target would appear either on the left or right side of the face drawing.

Dodd said the participants were told that the gaze cues in the study did not predict where the target would appear, so there was no reason for participants to attend to them.

“But the nature of social interaction tends to make it very difficult to ignore the cues, even when they’re meaningless,” he said.

As soon as they saw the target, participants would tap the space bar on their keyboard, giving researchers information on their susceptibility to the ‘gaze cues’. Each sequence, which lasted a few hundred milliseconds, was repeated hundreds of times.

Afterward, participants were surveyed on their beliefs on a range of political issues to establish their political ideology.

In addition to shedding light on the differences between the two political camps, researchers said the results add to growing indications that suggest biology plays a role determining one’s political direction. (ANI)