Abstract
Using the “Don’t look” (DL) paradigm, wherein participants are asked not to look at a specific feature (i.e., eye, nose, and mouth), we previously documented that Easterners struggled to completely avoid fixating on the eyes and nose. Their underlying mechanisms for attractiveness may differ because the fixations on the eyes were triggered only reflexively, whereas fixations on the nose were consistently elicited. In this study, we predominantly focused on the nose, where the center-of-gravity (CoG) effect, which refers to a person’s tendency to look near an object’s CoG, could be confounded. Full-frontal and mid-profile faces were used because the latter’s CoG did not correspond to the nose location. Although we hypothesized that these two effects are independent, the results indicated that, in addition to the successful tracing of previous studies, the CoG effect explains the nose-attracting effect. This study not only reveals this explanation but also raises a question regarding the CoG effect on Eastern participants.
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The datasets used and analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request because participants did not consent to their data being freely available online or include this in the ethical application.
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This study was supported by grants from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (KAKENHI) (grant number: 20H05801).
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TK and WT contributed to the conception or design of the work, data collection, and data analysis and interpretation. TK drafted the article, and WT critically revised and translated the article. Both authors have read and approved the final manuscript.
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All procedures performed in the studies involving human participants were conducted in accordance with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Informed consent was obtained from all participants. The study protocol was approved by the institutional review board of Kumamoto University and Tokai University.
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Kawagoe, T., Teramoto, W. The center of a face catches the eye in face perception. Exp Brain Res (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-024-06822-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-024-06822-x