Motivated Directed Attention and Person Perception

It can be argued that humans have evolved sophisticated cognitive skills that facilitate complex interactions between individuals in our distinctly ultra-social environments. One goal of social cognitive psychology is to examine the cognitive mechanisms that have evolved that allow humans to uniquely and extensively socialize. The goal of this paper is to address a few cognitive mechanisms that allow humans to pursue and achieve functional goals, specifically related to reproduction. The adaptive allocation of attention in social environments, by both men and women, to stimuli that enables successful mating to occur will be discussed. Furthermore, the impact of females’ ovulatory status on selective attention to and bias towards mating-relevant stimuli will be discussed. The paper will address evolved motivations that directly influence cognition, which impacts social interactions with predominately opposite-sex members of the species.  Hopefully this paper will highlight the necessity of examining the cognitive mechanisms that underlie the social consequences of the downstream behaviors we are most interested in as researchers.

The first steps in creating a mental representation are attention and encoding. Whether it’s the sight of a double-scoop mint chocolate chip ice cream cone on a hot day, or noticing the beautiful face of a passerby who just might be your ideal romantic partner: one must first attend to the stimuli and in doing so, the sensory and perceptual information becomes encoded internally, creating a mental representation that can be further processed and manipulated cognitively. Fiske and Taylor note that there are several stages of encoding that are practical to social cognition: first, we analyze our environment pre-attentively, this process drives what we focus our attention on, and we then apply meaning to this stimuli by drawing upon our stores of knowledge to further engage in complex interactions with the stimuli. Attention, also known as the extent of selective cognitive work you engage in, is especially focused to stimuli that are social in nature; this includes the people we encounter in our lives, the self we never part with, and the interactions between the two. Alongside the preference for social stimuli, information processing is even more selective, in that some information or categories are inherently more fascinating and captivating than others (Fiske & Taylor, 2008). Deciding what information is naturally more interesting and relevant relies on examining the goals that affect social cognition. Ecological and evolutionary approaches to motivation and cognition have stressed that goals with a proximate impact on the perception of the social environment should be goals that have had the most impact on ultimate adaptive outcome. It is practical to conclude that the upstream processes in social situations are persistently attuned to motivations linked to survival and reproduction. The purpose of this paper is to highlight how functional motivations can influence upstream cognition, specifically attention and person perception.

Perception of, and memory for, events or behaviors are strongly influenced by the motivations of the perceiver. Fiske and Taylor (2008) noted five primary motivations that hold sway in our social cognitive processes: belonging, understanding, controlling, enhancing self, and trusting in-group members. Our goals and motivations seem to have power over lower-level cognitions and perceptions. For example, the threat of social exclusion, a threat that impinges on the belonging motivation, leads individuals to selectively attend to smiling faces: these threatened individuals identified smiling faces much quicker, fixated on those smiling faces, and disengaged from those faces much slower (DeWall, Maner, & Rouby, 2009). The results reveal the impact of motivation on downstream processes, specifically how social exclusion increases attention towards stimuli displaying social acceptance. This enhanced, selective attention towards smiling faces highlights the individual’s need to seek out and garner social acceptance following the exclusion event, subsequently satisfying the belongingness motivation. The influence of the motivation to belong on early-stage perceptual processing can help expand our understanding of how and why more downstream processes, pro-social or aggressive behaviors occur. In addition to Fiske and Taylor’s five motivations, it is pertinent to examine the two motivations that serve a well-defined functional purpose, survival and reproduction, which can further shed light on how upstream cognitive processes of attention and perception lead to downstream, adaptive behaviors (Neuberg, Kenrick, Maner, & Schaller, 2004).    

Humans tend to be unceasingly attuned to features of others that are telling of qualities indicating desirability as potential mating partners. Physical attractiveness is one such feature that plays a pivotal role in reproductive relationships. It is predicted that individuals will have their attention directed selectively to individuals that are physically attractive, and this selectiveness should be exaggerated in individuals with mating goals activated. Maner et al. (2003) conducted studies in which participants viewed arrays of both male and female faces of varying levels of attractiveness. Both sexes estimated high proportions of attractive women under conditions in which the arrays were only present for a very short period of time. Nevertheless, when arrays were presented longer, this overestimation for attractive females disappeared; together these first two studies imply early stage visual processing is captured by female attractiveness for both men and women. Likewise, women did not show this bias towards attractive men in their estimations. Taken together, these results support the notion that men utilize level of physical attractiveness as in indicator of fertility, a desirable trait in a potential romantic partner, and women gauge other women to evaluate their potential as competitors; both are reproductive motivations that selectively direct the perceivers’ attention.

As noted in the studies by Maner et al. (2003), the presence of an attractive opposite sex member in the environment cues reproductive goals for both men and women, which in turn directs upstream processing. Maner et al. (2003) did not further explore the consequences of this attentional bias towards attractive female faces, what downstream processes were impacted, merely the studies highlight the existence of such a bias: the attention of the perceiver, male or female, was directed and held by attractive female faces. It can be assumed, however, that this attentional bias should lead to greater chances of successfully completing the motivation. This attention bias facilitates downstream behavioral responses that are altered in a way in which options most readily activated are behaviors that were associated with an increase in reproductive success in our ancestral past (Neuberg et al., 2004). The mating goal not only directs the attention towards the target, but the perceiver has an activated repertoire of behaviors specific to those used in mating that can lead to a greater likelihood of reproductive success. For example, once a mating goal is active, the perceiver can quickly and effortlessly access and engage in behaviors that could lead to success with the target mate; for example, conveying intelligence through a joke or kindness through a smile (see Buss, 2002).

Examining research regarding the impact of ovulatory status on cognition might help to explore this notion of upstream attentional biases directing downstream behaviors to the successful completion of a reproductive motivation. Hormonal influences may act as a temporary motivational factor that can regulate our downstream behaviors, which in turn can lead to the successful goal attainment. Depending on where a woman is in her cycle, her sensitivity to perceptual cues of maleness can be described as a behavior that offers a myriad of further reproductive benefits (Macrae, Alnwick, Milne, & Schloerscheidt, 2002). At peak fertility, an ovulating woman does not need to engage in effortful processing to determine whether a potential mate is fit to reproduce with, since masculinity is used as a proxy for immunological competence, or how well the body can fight disease, which is an aptly desired mating characteristic (Thornhill & Gangestad, 1999). Results of study one revealed women who were at high risk for conception categorized male faces much quicker than those women who were at low risk; here, participants that were ovulating could attend to facial features that were indicative of masculinity, and their heightened attention to these features allowed for downstream advantage when categorizing the face as either male or female. Further research might examine how skilled an ovulating female is at delineating between varying degrees of masculinity, and subsequently actual testosterone levels. If ovulating women had increased abilities in discriminating between which males were in fact more masculine, signaling the increased immunocompetence, and thus the optimum mate would highlight the adaptive motivational function of this attentional bias and stimuli discriminatory advantage as allotted during peak fertility. In the second study, participants were evaluated on how quickly they could classify words that were either stereotypically matched or mismatched after primed by male or female faces; overall, stereotype matching was quickest when primed by male faces overall, but participants with a high risk of conception classified stereotype-matching words more rapidly than low risk individuals. Females with high conception risk had increased attentional biases towards physical indicators of maleness in faces, and this increased biases led to downstream advantages: superior access to categorical information about men as well. When females are at the highest risk of conception, their lower level perceptual processes are altered in a way that allows for more skillful appraisal of potential mating partners via the activation of information that is masculine. Furthermore, this study implicates the influence of hormones on directing upstream perceptual processes to achieve functional goals efficiently (Macrae et al., 2002).

Once a motivation is activated, it directs attention selectively to features of the social environment that have qualities related to attaining the activated goal. Reproductively relevant goals would most likely direct attention towards attaining a good mate: sex of the individual, level of physical attraction, and level of social dominance. The activation of mating goals would influence lower level processes in a way that is biased towards successful completion of the goal through downstream processes. The alteration of person perception processes during ovulation provides evidence for upstream processes that facilitate successful mating. Results from Macrae et al. (2002) support the notion that women can have reproductive motivations chronically, yet temporarily, activated. Since an ovulating female is at the highest risk for conception, it makes sense that she might have reproduction on the mind, implicitly or explicitly. However, it is unclear whether the mating goal comes first and subsequent perception of the environment is altered accordingly, or the presence of a potential sexual partner cues the mating goal, which subsequently alters further processing of stimuli in the environment. Results from Maner et al.’s (2003) study four also supports the notion that individuals can be dispositionally inclined to reproduce, or to have the motivation of reproduction habitually activated. Further examining of individuals that are dispositionally attuned to reproduction might shed light on the order of events.

 Individuals can differ along the sociosexuality continuum, that is, there are individual differences in what mating strategies are preferred. Sexually restricted individuals prefer long-term mating strategies, commitment, and emotional intimacy prior to sexual intercourse. Sexually unrestricted individuals prefer short-term mating strategies, casual sex, sexual variety, and one-night stands (Simpson & Gangestad, 1991). Duncan, Park, Faulkner, Schaller, Neuberg, & Kenrick’s (2007) study utilized a task that presented participants with both attractive and unattractive faces at the same time, and had participants detect a feature change in a face (disappearing eye or nose) as a source of attentional constraint. Sexually unrestricted men, those who dispositionally prefer short-term mating strategies, selectively allocated attention to attractive females: they were quicker to detect changes in attractive female faces and slower to detect changes in unattractive female faces. The fourth study by Maner et al. (2003) utilized eye-tracking technology to measure fixation; results revealed both sexes were biased in attention towards the physically attractive female targets. In this fourth study, women did exhibit a bias towards physically attractive male faces, yet, this fourth study also measured sexual restrictedness; sexually unrestricted men and women selectively attended to attractive opposite-sex faces, supporting the notion that motivation to mate steered their attention. Finally, women’s attention to attractive men and attention to attractive women was strongly positively related; women who were dispositionally motivated to search out possible mates are also interested in assessing their potential competitors for these mates. Results of both Maner et al.’s (2003) fourth study and Duncan et al.’s (2007) study highlight the impact of mating goals on attention, specifically dispositional motivations: individuals with reproduction motivations chronically activated perceive their environment accordingly, to attain their goal. Males that were sexually restricted did not display an attractive opposite sex preference; perhaps indicating the motivation must be activated first in order for the upstream processing to be altered.

The adaptive nature of this low level attention biasing process suggests evolved perceptual processes that are elastic in their response to contextual cues, and are subject to influence by the perceiver’s disposition (Duncan et al., 2007). The men with personalities more inclined to engage in mating behaviors exhibited a stronger attentional bias towards attractive opposite-sex faces, faces that reveal indicators of increased fertility and increased reproductive value. This attentional bias serves to increase the likelihood of a mating event occurring, fulfilling the functional motivation of reproduction. It is worthy to note, however, that the most attractive female faces are ones that are symmetrical; symmetry has been found to connote increased genetic quality (Thornhill & Gangestad, 1999). Most research on facial attractiveness employ faces that are symmetrical; as faces become less symmetrical, they become less attractive. Duncan et al.’s (2007) study can support the assumption that men have a bias for symmetry since it serves as an indicator of mate quality. Challenging this however, is results indicating a preference for visual symmetry is only found in men: men, not women, exhibit a preference for visual symmetry across multiple domains, including abstract and real world objects (Shepherd & Bar, 2011). Since this preference generalizes to stimuli unrelated to mating, it can be questioned as to whether or not the preferences satisfy the motive for reproduction or due to enhanced perceptual processing; unusually, this preference is not exhibited by women, so future studies would need to examine this male dominant preference.

             The effects of goal activation on attention and perception consequently influence the downstream processes as well. The aforementioned effects of attention direction and perception should influence memory. In three experiments, Becker, Kenrick, Guerin, and Maner (2005) utilized the matching game Concentration to determine if early perceptual processing enhanced encoding and retrieval; specifically they examined whether a target’s sex and level of physical attractiveness impacted how well their spatial location is remembered. Study one utilized same sex arrays of faces to be matched, and results indicated biases in memory for the location of attractive female faces and subsequently both sexes exhibited this spatial location memory enhancement. Study two utilized mixed sex arrays for the matching task, and results supported the first study in which attractive female faces were matched in fewer turns than attractive men.  Study three supported the previous studies and revealed there were a lower proportion of mismatches for attractive women, opposed to average-looking women. Intriguingly, they also found that attractive male faces were mismatched at a higher proportion, and attractive female faces were matched first. This strong tendency to recall the location of attractive female faces for both men and women reveals the selective direction of attention towards the location of cues relevant to reproductive motivations, either in pursuit of a mate or evaluation of a potential competitor. Also, this physically attractive female face permeates early processing at both stages, first, it selectively directs perceivers’ attention, and second, it possesses features distinct enough to garner extended encoding into memory. From study one to study three, the task became more and more difficult with the addition of faces; nevertheless, the advantage in spatial location memory for attractive female faces remained. It seems as though this ability to capture attention, as displayed by attractive female faces is immune to distraction; however, further studies should examine to what extent this bias remains, if other motivations are activated (e.g., survival) how salient will the attractive female faces remain? Still, the enhanced spatial memory for attractive faces supports the notion that motivations can impact upstream processing. It would be of great importance to remember where you saw an attractive face, not so much the actual face itself, in order to engage with that individual further. This enhanced spatial location memory for attractive faces occurs automatically, whether the perceiver wishes to engage with the face further in pursuit of their reproduction motivation should recruit more effortful processing of the face, and subsequent facial recognition. Challenging the assumption that females attend to attractive same-sex faces to serve intra-sexual competition is the notion that females are prone to seek affiliation when stressed (Taylor, 2006). Perhaps the matching task induced a level of stress that would direct attention towards individuals that would fulfill the motivation to affiliate; future research will need to tease apart which motivation more strongly directs female attention towards attractive same-sex faces, perhaps through explicit activation of either goal prior to completing the matching task.

Early cognitive processes are guided by evolutionarily relevant motivations, which in turn impacts downstream processes. Interestingly, the fifth study by Maner et al (2003) revealed women’s memory for attractive men is poor. The initial selective attention to attractive men is strong, but the processing might end there since women are not inclined to mate with male strangers and physical attractiveness isn’t a feature that women (during the majority of their cycle) are interested in. A study by Anderson et al. (2010) supports this notion that ovulation status redirects attention towards attractive men, but the subsequent memory for these attractive male faces is not improved. It is assumed that increased visual attention to stimuli should increase memory for that target; however, results revealed women near ovulation did not have better memory for the male faces they selectively attended to. This lack of memory for attractive male faces could indicate these women were not truly cognitively processing these faces, but instead engaging in a different reproductively relevant strategic behavior, such as increased eye contact to convey romantic interest. Furthermore, the ovulating females might not engage in effortful encoding of these attractive male faces, since they are strangers, and the cost of mating with this unknown male is too high, thus shutting down the continued processing. Either way, the implicit redirection of ovulating women’s attention towards attractive male faces serves as support of a reproductive motivation being activated. Determining what mechanism would enhance memory for attractive male faces is not essential though, since females evaluate males on different reproductive-relevant cues, such as social dominance or intelligence (Li & Kenrick, 2006). 

            The activation of a motivational system leads to social cognitive consequences that facilitate adaptive behavioral responses; the functional motives perspective is vital in revealing this relationship, above and beyond the associative priming perspective (Neuberg et al., 2004). We perceive and think in ways that serve our goals most effectively and efficiently. The motivational states of reproduction and survival cannot be condensed purely to the dichotomy of approach and avoid proclivities, instead, each motivation has a distinct cascade of perceptual, cognitive, and behavioral consequences (Kenrick, Neuberg, Griskevicius, Becker, & Schaller, 2010). However, much of early social cognitive research focuses on pure epistemic goals (Neuberg et al., 2004). There arises a mutual benefit between the fields of Social Cognitive Psychology and Evolutionary Psychology: the evolutionary perspective benefits greatly from learning of basic cognitive processing to study these human social goals, and the social cognitive perspective can benefit from examining these processes as they are influenced by functional motives. This framework can lead to more precise predictions of human motivations: by ascertaining functionally distinct motivational states that have repercussions for reproduction and survival, when activated, is predicted “to exert a specific set of consequences for human attention, perception, cognition, and behavior in relation to specific kinds of fitness-relevant stimuli in the social environment” (Kenrick et al., 2010, p.64).

In conclusion, upstream processes such as attention and perception are directed in functional ways by fundamental goals of survival and reproduction. The importance of studying these lower level cognitions and perceptual processes, as they are directed our motivations, will enlighten individuals researching potential nuances in downstream judgments, cognitions, and behaviors. Furthermore, these results, results from Maner et al.’s (2003) fourth study, and results Macrae et al. (2002) highlight the notion that the reproduction motivation can be activated dispositionally, and then subsequently, attention and person perception processes are directed accordingly. Future studies will need to empirically assess if the motivation of reproduction is triggered after encountering a potential sexual partner, of if the motivation of reproduction, being essentially fundamental in nature, is chronically and implicitly activated at all times. Further research will hopefully expand upon and branch out to examine proximate goals that serve the ultimate motivations of survival and reproduction.  

References

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