Social cues modulate the Simon effect

• Main Authors: Chia-Hao Shih, 石家豪
• Other Authors: Yi-Yu Yeh
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2009
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/23449868666699805756

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 心理學研究所 === 97 === The purpose of the present study is to investigate how individual’s performance is affected by the head orientation and gaze direction in the context of the Simon task. The social facilitation (Zajonc, 1965) may occur when the head or the eyes look toward the participants, making the Simon effect smaller than when the head or the eyes look away from them. We manipulated the gaze direction in Experiments 1 and 2 and used eye-like stimuli and faces as stimuli, respectively. We further manipulated the head orientation in Experiment 3. Results showed that the face seems to play an important role in the facilitation effect, only when the social information was sufficient, social cues such as head orientation and gaze direction produce the facilitation effect, making the Simon effect smaller or disappeared. Besides, the head seems to be dominant over the eye gaze. The facilitation effect of the gaze direction only occurred when the head looked away from the participants.