Social Excluder’s Face Reduces Gaze-Triggered Attention Orienting

doi:10.21203/rs.3.rs-3090461/v1

Social ostracism, a negative affective experience in interpersonal interactions, is thought to modulate the gaze-cueing effect (GCE). However, it is unclear whether the impact of social exclusion on the GCE is related to the identity of the cueing face. Therefore, the present study employed a two-phase paradigm to address this issue. In the first phase, two groups of participants were instructed to complete a Cyberball game with two virtual avatars to establish a binding relationship between a specific face’s identity and the emotions of social exclusion or inclusion. In the second phase, these two virtual avatars (exclusion faces/inclusion faces) and two new faces (control faces) were used as cueing faces in the gaze-cueing task. The results found that, for the exclusion group, the magnitudes of the GCEs for the exclusion and exclusion-control faces were similar in the 200 ms stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) condition, while the exclusion face’s GCE was significantly smaller than that of the exclusion-control face in the 700 ms SOA condition. In contrast, for the inclusion group, the GCEs for inclusion and inclusion-control faces in both the 200 ms SOA and 700 ms SOA conditions were no significant difference. This study reveals that the effect of social exclusion on the GCE is related to the identity of the cueing face, with individuals more reluctant to follow the gaze direction of excluder and shift their attention and provides experimental evidence that the perception of higher social relations can exert a top-down impact on the processing of social spatial cues.

gaze direction

gaze-cueing effect

social exclusion

social inclusion

The direction of the eye gaze conveys valuable information and is crucial in social interactions. Observing one’s gaze direction provides inferences about their current attentive focus, emotional state and behavioural intentions (Bayliss et al., 2006), while following individuals’ gaze shifts contributes to social learning (Michel et al., 2021) and to the detection of rewarding stimuli in social settings (Ohlsen et al., 2013). Investigations of the effects of variations in gaze direction on attentional shifts have often adopted the typical Posner’s gaze-cueing paradigm (Friesen & Kingstone, 1998), in which a direct gaze face is presented and subsequently the gaze turns to the left or right. After a variable delay (called stimulus onset asynchrony [SOA]), a peripheral target appears at the gazed-at or non-gazed-at locations, and the participants are required to detect the target’s whereabouts. These studies have reliably demonstrated the gaze-cueing effect (GCE; Jones et al., 2010), that is, an attentional shift towards the cueing location revealed by faster responses when the target appears to the side of the space previously cued by the gaze.

A range of social factors have been identified to modulate the GCE. Collectively, the factors that impact the GCE have been categorised into three major types: the observer, the cueing face and the relationship between the two (Dalmaso et al., 2020). Specifically, the observer refers to the effect of individual differences, such as gender (Bayliss et al., 2005), age (Slessor et al., 2008), personal traits (Park & Lee, 2016) and internal states (Wilkowski et al., 2009), on the GCE. The cueing face refers to how facial features, such as facial expressions (McCrackin et al., 2019), face dominance (Jones et al., 2011) and facial attractiveness (Roth et al., 2021), affect individuals’ GCEs. Finally, researches on the relationship between the two have mainly focused on internal and external groups (Chen et al., 2017), ethnic members (Pavan et al., 2011), familiarity (Deaner et al., 2007), cooperation (Ciardo et al., 2015) and so forth.

Social ostracism is a type of social relation that might occur during human interaction and cause the excluded individual to feel intense negative feelings, such as exclusion, sorrow and rage (Buckley et al., 2004; Riva et al., 2017; Williams & Jarvis, 2006). In studies of this, those who have experienced social exclusion have reported lower levels of belonging, self-esteem, control and meaningful existence, creating psychological misery comparable to physiological pain (Williams et al., 2000). Therefore, in the aftermath of an exclusion experience, individuals tend to pursue a sense of belonging so that they may gain acceptance (Dewall et al., 2007). It is common knowledge that following others’ gaze shifting is an indication of social connectedness (Brooks & Meltzoff, 2014). An example of this is the study carried out by Wilkowski et al. (2009), in which individuals recalled exclusion and inclusion events to induce the relevant emotional experience using virtual faces as cues. The authors discovered that social exclusion produced a greater GCE than social inclusion. Contrary to the above research, Capellini et al. (2019) employed an online ball-tossing game (Cyberball) to induce participants’ social exclusion and inclusion experiences, and they reported that social exclusion could reduce the GCE with real faces as cues. The authors explained that this may be because the participants interpreted an averted gaze as a signal of social avoidance and were unwilling to follow the gaze shifting. In general, the inquiry into the impact of social exclusion on the modulation of others’ gaze direction towards an individual’s attention orientation continues to be a topic that warrants further exploration.

Notably, previous studies have focused on whether individuals’ processing of an unfamiliar face’s gaze cues alters after experiencing social exclusion or inclusion, which explored the general impact of social exclusion on social attention. However, because we live in complex social environments populated by other individuals and because our attentional resources are limited, our social attention system has likely developed to enable us to react more promptly to certain cueing faces than others. In this sense, the emotional experience of social exclusion is typically associated with one or more excluders in real-world social interactions. Thus, we ask: Is the influence of the emotional experience regarding social attention orientation triggered by gaze direction related to the specific cueing face (exclusion face vs control face)? To date, this issue has not been addressed.

In summary, the present study combined the Cyberball and gaze-cueing tasks to investigate whether social exclusion impacts the processing of the excluder’s gaze cues. The participants were randomly divided into two groups: the exclusion group and the inclusion group. In the first phase, participants completed the Cyberball manipulation, in which the number of times they caught the ball was predetermined to induce emotional experiences of social exclusion (exclusion group) and inclusion (inclusion group), with fewer balls caught representing social exclusion and more balls caught representing social inclusion. In the second phase, participants performed the standard gaze-cueing task, in which a face with the eyes gazing left or right served as the cue and the task was to detect where the target appeared following the cueing face. The cueing faces in the gaze-cueing task were represented by two virtual avatars (experimental faces) who cooperated with the participant to complete the Cyberball game and then two new faces (control faces). The GCE reflects the spatial attention allocation of a target (Lassalle, 2013), while SOA has been thought to refer to whether this attention allocation occurs automatically or volitionally (McKay et al., 2021). To be specific, under short SOA, an attention shift primarily indicates a reflective orientation, whereas, under long SOA, it reflects both the reflective orientation and attention maintenance (Driver et al., 1999; Friesen et al., 2004). Previous research has revealed that the impact of high-level social factors on the GCE varies depending on SOA (Dodd et al., 2011; Takao et al., 2018). Consequently, this investigation employed two SOA conditions—200 ms and 700 ms—to explore the potential regulation of SOA during the process of social exclusion on the GCE. Based on previous studies (Capellini et al., 2019; Wilkowski et al., 2009), we anticipated that social exclusion would modulate the GCE, namely, that exclusion and inclusion faces would exhibit significant differences in the GCE. Furthermore, since human emotions, cognition and behaviour are highly adaptive (Martin et al., 2013; Stockinger et al., 2021) and the nature of human learning is to produce specific responses to specific stimuli because this is more conducive to survival and socialisation, we would expect the effect of social exclusion on social attention to be limited to exclusion faces and not be generalisable to control faces; that is, we might observe that exclusion faces and control faces have different GCEs. In parallel, since guilt is a complex emotion that impacts an individual’s thinking and actions in a top–down manner, we anticipated that the effect of social exclusion on the GCE would be observed with long SOA only.

Participants

Ninety-five undergraduate students (46 female, mean age: 19.79 ± 1.49 years) from Sichuan Normal University were recruited to participate in this experiment. Previous studies investigating the GCE or ostracism have focused on sample sizes between 69 and 109 (Capellini et al., 2019; DeWall et al., 2009; Syrjämäki & Hietanen, 2020; Wilkowski et al., 2009); thus, we chose a value between the two. The participants were randomly divided into two groups: an exclusion group of 48 (24 females) and an inclusion group of 47 (22 females). All participants had normal or corrected-to-normal vision, and all signed informed consent. The study was approved by the ethics committee of the Institute of Brain and Psychological Sciences, Sichuan Normal University (SCNU-201201).

Stimulus

Four models (2 females) were selected, and each model collected three gaze directions: direct gaze (0°), left-averted gaze (-20°) and right-averted gaze (+ 20°). Finally, a total of 12 faces were collected for this experiment. Each image was presented at a size of 465 × 465 pixels, with a grey background and subtending 10.85° × 10.85° of the visual angle. Two face images (1 female) were also selected as the face stimuli for the practice experiment.

Experimental Design and Procedures

The experiment used a mixed design of 2 (group: exclusion group vs inclusion group) × 2 (SOA: 200 ms vs 700 ms) × 2 (cue–target congruency: congruent vs incongruent) × 2 (face type: experimental face vs control face), in which group was a between-subject factor and the rest were within-subject factors. The dependent variable was response times (RTs).

Prior to the experiment, participants were asked for a photo ID, for which the background colour was then changed to match the experimental material using Photoshop 2019. Upon arrival at the lab, they were first asked to complete the Social Anxiety Inventory (SIAS; Mattick & Clarke, 1998) and the UCLA Loneliness Scale (3rd edition; Russell, 1996). This was followed by a continuation of the Cyberball manipulation (Williams & Jarvis, 2006), which was designed to induce a sense of exclusion or inclusion. In the Cyberball manipulation (see Fig. 1a), to make the task more realistic, participants were instructed that they would be performing an online ball-tossing game with two other players (1 female), who were allegedly real participants playing Cyberball in another lab. Throughout the game, the participant always acted as Player 2, and the others acted as Players 1 and 3. In addition, participants in the exclusion group received only two out of the 30 balls, while the inclusion group received the same proportion of balls as the other two players for 10 out of the 30 total tosses. On completion of the manipulation, participants filled out the 9-point Need Threat Scale and the Positive and Negative Affect Scale to assess the validity of the manipulation.

Subsequently, participants performed a gaze-cueing task in which the cues were pictures of the four models’ faces (2 females). Two of the models (1 female) had appeared as virtual avatars in the Cyberball manipulation, as they were experimental faces in this task, and the faces of the other two unfamiliar models were the control faces. The experimental faces were exclusion faces in the exclusion group and inclusion faces in the inclusion group. Face types were balanced between participants. In the gaze-cueing task (see Fig. 1), 1000 ms fixation point was first presented, followed by a random 200 ms or 700 ms presentation of faces looking left or right; then, the target (a black dot) was oriented either leftward or rightward in a spatially congruent or spatially incongruent position with respect to the gaze direction. At this moment, participants were instructed to press the corresponding response key on seeing the black dot, with the target appearing on the left designated by pressing 1 and the target appearing on the right designated by pressing 2. The target disappeared after the participant’s response, followed by the presentation of a 1000 ms blank screen. The experiment consisted of six blocks of 64 trials each, for a total of 384 trials. Preceding the formal experiment, participants completed a 16-trial practice block to familiarise themselves with the task; this featured two different model faces (1 female) from the formal experiment. To test whether the participants had guessed the purpose of this experiment, they were questioned whether anything in the ball-tossing game was confusing by the end of the entire experimental task.

Data Analysis

Three participants in the exclusion group guessed the purpose of the experiment; two participants in the inclusion group reported a catch rate of less than 10%. Eventually, 90 participants were brought in for further analysis, with 45 participants (22 males, 23 females) in the exclusion group and 45 participants (24 males, 21 females) in the inclusion group.

For the reaction time analysis, the trials with incorrect responses were first excluded (0.73%), leaving the correct ones, and then data below 100 ms and above 3000 ms were removed, along with trials with RTs shorter or longer than three standard deviations (1.32%).

The final analysis was conducted using SPSS 23. Reaction time, as the dependent variable, was subjected to a four-way repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA), with group (exclusion group, inclusion group), SOA (200 ms,700 ms), cue–target congruence (congruent, incongruent) and face type (experimental face, control face) as independent variables and all analyses employing an α level of 0.05. η_p² represented ANOVA effect size estimates, and p-values were corrected using the Bonferroni method.

Questionnaires

According to the Social Anxiety Scale and the UCLA Loneliness Scale, the analysis of the scores showed no significant differences between the exclusion and inclusion groups (ps > 0.05; for more specific details, please see supplementary materials).

Operation Check for Cyberball Manipulation

The results of the Threat Demand Scale (see Table 1) showed that the scores of the exclusion group were significantly lower than those of the inclusion group in terms of belonging, meaningful existence and control (ps < 0.001). Regarding emotional experiences of for feeling bad and sad, the scores of the exclusion group were significantly higher than those of the inclusion group (feeling bad: p = 0.04, feeling sad: p = 0.033). In addition, the exclusion group scored significantly lower than the inclusion group in terms of feeling pleasant and happy (feeling pleasant: p = 0.045; feeling happy: p = 0.039). For “others ignoring me” and “others excluding me”, the exclusion group achieved higher scores than the inclusion group; however, they had lower scores than the inclusion group in the catching ratio (ps < 0.001). Thus, the sense of exclusion manipulation was effective. However, on the positive and negative emotions scale (see Table 1), no significant difference was found between the exclusion and inclusion groups for positive and negative emotions (positive emotions: p = 0.126; negative emotions: p = 0.439).

Table 1 Mood differences between participants in the exclusion and inclusion groups after the Cyberball manipulation

Group Independent sample t-test
Need Threat Scale Exclusion Inclusion t p
Belonging	13.09 ± 7.12	29.68 ± 9.12	-9.58	＜0.001
Self-esteem	26.00 ± 7.42	29.11 ± 8.55	-1.84	0.070
Meaningful existence	19.67 ± 9.40	29.91 ± 10.02	-4.98	＜0.001
Control	16.64 ± 8.31	24.27 ± 8.39	-4.31	＜0.001
Emotion (good)	5.64 ± 2.74	6.59 ± 1.74	-1.94	0.056
Emotion (bad)	4.07 ± 2.86	2.55 ± 1.80	2.99	0.004
Emotion (friendly)	6.87 ± 2.35	6.93 ± 1.72	-0.15	0.882
Emotion (indifferent)	2.80 ± 2.15	2.68 ± 1.84	0.28	0.781
Emotion (angry)	3.00 ± 2.13	2.16 ± 1.78	1.97	0.052
Emotion (pleasant)	4.47 ± 2.62	5.52 ± 2.77	-2.03	0.045
Emotion (happy)	4.44 ± 2.58	5.52 ± 2.25	-2.10	0.039
Emotion (sad)	3.89 ± 2.60	2.80 ± 2.14	2.17	0.033
Emotion (painful)	3.04 ± 2.34	2.20 ± 1.85	1.88	0.064
Others ignoring me	6.80 ± 1.96	3.80 ± 2.31	6.57	＜0.001
Others excluding me	5.20 ± 2.63	3.30 ± 2.16	3.72	＜0.001
Catching ratio (%)	7.47 ± 4.26	26.45 ± 6.22	-16.84	＜0.001
Positive and Negative Affect Schedule
Positive emotions	28.56 ± 7.79	30.98 ± 6.95	-1.55	0.126
Negative emotions	23.60 ± 8.13	22.25 ± 8.27	0.78	0.439

Gaze-Cueing Task

ANOVA results revealed a significant main effect for SOA (F (1, 87) = 64.098, p < 0.001, η_p² = 0.424), with RTs in the 200 ms SOA condition being significantly longer than those in the 700 ms SOA condition. The main effect of cue–target congruence was also significant (F (1, 87) = 104.455, p < 0.001, η_p² =0.546), with valid cues being remarkably faster than invalid ones. Critically, a significant four-way interaction of group × SOA × cue–target congruence × face type occurred (F (1, 87) = 4.905, p = 0.029, η_p² = 0.053). Furthermore, the simple effects analysis revealed (see Table 2 and Fig. 2 ) that, in the 200 ms SOA condition for the exclusion group, the RTs for both the exclusion faces and the control faces were faster in congruent conditions than in incongruent ones (exclusion faces: p < 0.001, control faces: p = 0.003). In contrast, in the 700 ms SOA condition, RTs in congruent conditions were significantly faster than in incongruent conditions for the control faces (p < 0.001), with no significant differences found for the exclusion faces (p = 0.222).

Table 2 Differences in reaction time and GCE between exclusion and inclusion groups (M ± SD)

		200 ms		700 ms
		Congruent	Incongruent	Congruent	Incongruent
Exclusion group	Experimental faces (Exclusion faces)	416.01 ± 9.07	436.32 ± 9.23	410.17 ± 9.26	418.20 ± 10.06
Exclusion group	Control faces (Exclusion-control faces)	420.78 ± 9.66	433.84 ± 9.23	400.80 ± 8.72	420.22 ± 9.49
Inclusion group	Experimental faces (Inclusion faces)	433.86 ± 9.17	449.28 ± 9.34	409.37 ± 9.37	430.06 ± 10.18
Inclusion group	Control faces (Inclusion-control faces)	430.18 ± 9.77	449.01 ± 9.33	411.91 ± 8.82	430.88 ± 9.60

In the inclusion group, the RTs in the congruent condition were significantly faster than those in the incongruent condition, regardless of SOA and face type (ps < 0.001). However, other main effects and interactions were not observed (ps > 0.05).

In addition, the GCE (GCE = RT inconsistent - RT consistent) was used as the dependent variable, with 2 (group: exclusion group, inclusion group) × 2 (SOA: 200 ms, 700 ms) × 2 (face type: experimental faces, control faces) used for a three-way ANOVA. The results found (see Fig. 3) that the three-way interaction was significant (F (1, 87) = 4.905, p = 0.029, η_p² = 0.053). A simple effects analysis revealed that the GCE induced by the exclusion faces at 700 ms was significantly smaller than that of the exclusion control faces (p = 0.023), whereas this effect did not appear in the 200-ms condition (p = 0.234). In the inclusion group, no significant difference was found in the GCE induced by inclusion faces versus inclusion control faces in either the 200-ms or 700-ms SOA conditions (200-ms SOA: p = 0.578; 700-ms SOA: p = 0.732). In addition, in the 200-ms SOA condition, no significant GCE difference was found between exclusion faces and inclusion faces (p = 0.395) or between exclusion control faces and inclusion control faces (p = 0.350). In the 700-ms SOA condition, the GCE evoked by exclusion faces was significantly smaller than that of inclusion faces (p = 0.043), while no significant GCE difference was observed between exclusion control faces and inclusion control faces (p = 0.939).

Correlation of Social Anxiety Scale and UCLA Loneliness Scale with GCE

To investigate the correlation between the difference in the GCE among conditions and the Social Anxiety Scale and UCLA Loneliness Scale, a Pearson correlation analysis was performed on the difference between the GCE of the control faces minus the GCE of the experimental faces under separate SOA conditions and the SIAS and UCLA scores for the two groups. The GCE difference in the 200-ms SOA (see supplementary materials) was found to be positively correlated with the UCLA score of the exclusion group, with the difference reaching marginal significance (r = 0.278, p = 0.064). Nevertheless, the GCE difference in the other conditions was not significantly correlated with the SIAS and UCLA scores (ps > 0.05).

This study extends prior research by incorporating the concepts of social exclusion and inclusion into the perception of a specific face. To achieve this, a Cyberball manipulation was employed to evoke social exclusion and inclusion, and these facial stimuli were subsequently used as cues in the gaze-cueing task. The findings revealed that, under the 700 ms SOA condition, exclusion faces generated lower GCEs than inclusion faces, with no difference observed under the 200 ms SOA condition. Furthermore, exclusion faces elicited smaller GCEs than exclusion-control faces under the 700 ms SOA condition only, but no significant difference was observed for the GCE of the inclusion group under the two SOA conditions.

In line with previous findings (Lyyra et al., 2017; Syrjämäki et al., 2020), this study demonstrated that exclusion faces generate a smaller GCE in individuals compared to inclusion faces, implying that social exclusion affects individuals’ processing of others’ eye gaze directions. Interestingly, discrepant with previous studies (Capellini et al., 2019; Wilkowski et al., 2009) finding that the GCE for exclusion control faces is significantly greater (Wilkowski et al., 2009) or less than the GCE for inclusion-control faces (Capellini et al., 2019), the present study found no significant difference between the two, although the conditions were the exact equivalent of those studies. These inconsistent findings may be due to the experimental design. The present experiment was conducted with two identities—the experimental face (exclusion/inclusion faces) and the control face—for gaze cueing, which may have made the participants’ perceptions of exclusion or inclusion object-specific, thereby increasing the likelihood that the effect of exclusion on the GCE was connected to specific faces as opposed to producing a generalised effect. In contrast, in the experiments by Wilkowski et al. (2009) and Capellini et al. (2019), only one face condition (equivalent to the control faces in this study) was included, which may have made it easier to observe generalisation effects of individuals’ exclusion or inclusion of cueing faces. Consequently, Wilkowski et al. (2009) and Capellini et al. (2019) observed the effect of social exclusion on the GCE for unfamiliar faces, whereas this effect in the present investigation was predominantly detected for experimental faces but not for control faces.

This research contributes to the existing body of knowledge by showing that exclusion only reduced the GCE elicited by the exclusion faces but had no effect on the control faces in the exclusion group. This demonstrates that the impact of social exclusion on social attention is related to the particular face that elicits social exclusion. Conceivably, the exclusion face is linked to negative emotional experiences, such as exclusion and denial, which may lead to a decrease in emotional value and social salience and cause individuals to be more reluctant to transfer their attention to follow others’ gaze shifting. Remarkably, past studies have discovered that, after experiencing exclusion, people make greater efforts to fit in with society in order to feel accepted (Dewall et al., 2007). Accordingly, it stands to reason that those who have been socially excluded would pay more attention to all faces’ gaze shifting. However, in this research, participants’ cognitive and behavioural responses to different objects (exclusion vs control faces) differed after experiencing social exclusion, which may be related to the random presentation of exclusion and control faces, with the presentation of control faces possibly provoking a different response than that of exclusion faces. The observation that individuals were more likely to follow the gaze direction of the control face than that of the exclusion face, implying a possible avenue for forging new social relationships, is indicative of the highly adaptable nature of human social behaviour. Clearly, it is more advantageous to draw attention to a potential new object than to an object that is hostile to them.

In the 700 ms SOA condition, the effect of social exclusion on the GCE was dominated by the fact that exclusion faces produced a reduced GCE, whereas in the 200 ms SOA condition, the GCE was similar for both exclusion and inclusion faces. The results suggest that, during the early stage of attention, the rapid localisation to the target refers to reflective attention (Cheal & Lyon, 1991) that is unaffected by the emotional experience of social exclusion. Nevertheless, in later cognitive processing, individuals can exercise top–down inhibition over the attentional shift elicited by the exclusion face. This result is in accordance with previous research (Capozzi et al., 2016; Dodd et al., 2011; Takao et al., 2018), indicating that the influence of high social factors on the GCE occurs at a later stage of face information processing.

Notably, in the present study, experimental faces (exclusion faces or inclusion faces) were employed in the Cyberball manipulation, whereas control faces did not occur, which resulted in experimental and control faces differing in familiarity, as previous research has shown that face familiarity influences our neural (Gobbini & Haxby, 2007), behaviour (Ramon et al., 2011) and electrical skin responses (Tranel et al., 1985) during face information processing. The idea may be raised that these results could be an effect of familiarity. However, we found that exclusion faces induced a lower GCE than inclusion faces, both of which were identical in terms of familiarity, suggesting that the reduction of exclusion faces on the GCE cannot be solely attributed to face familiarity.

The limitations of the current study were twofold. First, considering that the two emotional experiences may cancel each other out if the same participant receives both the social exclusion and inclusion manipulations, we adopted a between-subject design; however, this setup may inevitably have increased the influence of individual differences on the experimental results. Therefore, future studies should utilise a within-subject design to further validate the results of the present study. In addition, this study used static facial images, which may be ecologically invalid to some extent. In a more ecological environment (e.g. interaction in real life or virtual reality), the effects of social exclusion and social inclusion on the GCE may be stronger or weaker. Thus, this phenomenon could be further verified in future studies using live-action video or virtual reality.

The findings indicate that the impact of social exclusion on the GCE is modulated by the cueing facial identity. Individuals exhibited a reduced tendency to direct their attention towards the gaze of the excluder compared to that of an unfamiliar face. Moreover, this decrease in the GCE was primarily observed in the later stages of face processing as a consequence of the aforementioned social exclusion. The current results expand upon the existing understanding that social exclusion impacts the processing of gaze cues and further corroborate the notion that the perception of superior social relations can regulate the processing of socially spatial cues in a top–down manner.

Author contribution statement

Z.H. and L.Z. conceived and designed the experiments. L.Z. and J.Y. performed the data acquisition and analyzed the data. Z.H. and J.Y. interpreted the data and drafted the manuscript. All authors revised and approved the manuscript.

Conflicts of interest

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Funding

This study was supported by the National Social Science Fund of China (grant number：BBA210032).

Ethical approval and Informed consent

The study involving human participants were reviewed and approved by the ethics committee of the Institute of Brain and Psychological Sciences, Sichuan Normal University (SCNU-201201).Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Data availability

The data and material that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author ([email protected]) on request， without undue reservation.

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No competing interests reported.

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Social Excluder’s Face Reduces Gaze-Triggered Attention Orienting

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