The Effects of Priming-Induced Social Approach and Avoidance Goals on the Exploration of Goal-Relevant Stimuli

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1 J. Krajewski et al.: Effects on Social the Exploration Psychology of 2011; Goal-Relevant Vol. Hogrefe 42(2): Publishing Stimuli Original Article The Effects of Priming-Induced Social Approach and Avoidance Goals on the Exploration of Goal-Relevant Stimuli An Eye-Tracking Experiment Jarek Krajewski 1, Martin Sauerland 2, and Michael Muessigmann 2 1 Schumpeter School of Business and Economics, University of Wuppertal, Germany 2 Department of Psychology, University of Landau, Germany Abstract. This article presents an experiment testing the assumption that humans show clear avoidance reactions to possible nonbeneficial social contacts, even without conscious awareness. When the potential costs of interpersonal contacts are salient, people quickly respond to and extensively explore those situational configurations that are relevant to experimentally induced goals. A priming procedure was used to activate potential costs or benefits of interpersonal contacts or neutral aspects. To assess the unconscious activation of social approach or avoidance responses we chose three parameters reflecting participants eye movements on different pictures that contained (1) social and (2) nonsocial flight- and avoidance-relevant areas (areas of interest, AOI). Participants primed with the costs (benefits) of social contacts explored nonsocial (social) AOI on the presented pictures significantly longer than participants who were primed with the benefits (costs) of interpersonal contacts. Keywords: social affiliation, avoidance goals, eye-tracking, top-down processes Many goals we try to achieve in our daily lives are genuinely social. Very often, the motive behind our actions is the wish to be approved, accepted, or liked. At the same time, we often try to avoid being socially excluded or rejected. Several psychological theories have focused on the different facets of this affiliation motive, and a great number of empirical findings already exist. There is now a large body of research that integrates the empirical research regarding human affiliation into global models and theoretical frameworks (e.g., Baumeister & Leary, 1995, 2000; Kulik & Mahler, 2000; Williams, 2001). Much contemporary research is concerned with what the antecedences, mediators, moderators, and especially the consequences of social rejection, social exclusion, social ignorance, or social isolation are (e.g., Baumeister, 2005; Buckley, Winkel, & Leary, 2004; Warburton, Williams, & Cairns, 2006; Williams, 2007). Consequences on mood and emotions (e.g., Eisenberger, Lieberman, & Williams, 2003), intelligence and specific cognitive processes (e.g., Baumeister, Twenge, & Nuss, 2002), and prosocial as well as antisocial responses (e.g., Twenge, Baumeister, DeWall, DOI: / /a Ciarocco, & Bartels, 2007) have all been investigated. Many of these studies are based explicitly on the evolutionary-oriented belongingness hypothesis put forward by Baumeister and Leary (1995, 2000). This assumes that humans have been able to solve survival related, adaptive problems (e.g., improving hunting efficiency and food procurement, or improving defense against predators) more efficiently by the formation of social systems. However, group living is also accompanied by disadvantages for an individual (Kurzban & Leary, 2001). As humans generally live in groups (Coon, 1946), the resulting approach-avoidance conflict must regularly have been solved usually in favor of the approach component. Many recent affiliation theories are, at least implicitly, consistent with this conclusion (e.g., Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Gardner, Pickett, & Knowles, 2005; Leary, 2001), emphasizing that humans are motivated to initiate, maintain, and expand social contacts, and that they try to avoid losing existing bonds. This may be the reason why much of contemporary research is dedicated to approach and appetence aspects of the affiliation motive.

2 J. Krajewski et al.: Effects on the Exploration of Goal-Relevant Stimuli 153 However, as mentioned above, even in the modern world there are circumstances that motivate people to reduce the number of social contacts, to avoid specific persons, to minimize the intensity of interpersonal involvement, or to reduce the time spent with others (see also the more historical affiliation research by Hill, 1987; Miller & Suls, 1977; Rabbi, 1963; Schachter, 1959). We assume that contacts are chosen that lead to an adaptive advantage. Indeed, humans do not accept just any offered social contact. From an evolutionary point of view, psychological mechanisms (mood and emotions, cognitive processes, etc.) are functional in solving adaptive problems and should thus also enable humans to deal with such interpersonal costs of social contacts. Such psychological mechanisms do not necessarily have to operate in a conscious manner; they just have to prepare and initiate adaptive responses, that is, social approach or, if appropriate, social avoidance behavior. Such mechanisms should direct an individual s attention to goal-relevant stimuli (i.e., stimuli that are relevant for approaching or avoiding social contacts in a given situation). The general functionality of a process guiding an individual s attention to goal-relevant stimuli (e.g., Bruner & Postman, 1951; Palmer, 1975) can be conceptualized as follows: Certain nerve paths that are responsible for the early stages of here visual information processing are selectively inhibited by central higher-order motiveor goal-relevant processors, whereas other nerve paths are selectively excited. Activated motives or goals can penetrate early perceptual information processing steps and reconfigure the response of respective peripheral neural structures. Thus, perception can selectively be sensitized for motive- or goal-relevant classes of stimuli (see e.g., Metzinger, 2003). Consistent with this, Yarbus (1967) was able to show that tasks given to participants influence their eye movements. Eye-gazing patterns in the examination of pictures depend on the problem facing the observer and the information the observer hopes to gain from the picture (see also Balcetis & Dunning, 2006). Thus, activated goals and motives may also lead to a cognitive anticipation of goal-relevant stimuli so that an individual needs just minimal confirmatory input from the environment to detect them. Such processes can result in lower response latencies to relevant stimuli or may lower attention thresholds for congruent pictures or words. This process can also result in longer exploration times as Monty, Hall, and Rosenberger (1975) demonstrated with the help of an eye-tracking procedure. Generally, it is assumed that activated motives and goals adaptively increase sensitivity to motive- or goal-relevant stimuli. Motive- or goal-relevant stimuli can thus be processed faster and motive-congruent cognitions are more available (see e.g., Gardner, Pickett, & Brewer, 2000). Accordingly, the conclusion can be drawn that current motivational states and personal goals could orient an individual s perception to congruent stimuli and even shield incongruent ones (see also Atkinson & Walker, 1956; Bruner & Goodman, 1947; Simons & Chabris, 1999). This process could be regulated consciously as well as unconsciously. An eye-tracking procedure was applied in order to provide insight into (un-)conscious social approach or avoidance motives. As mentioned before, activated social approach motives should sensitize the perception and anticipation of stimuli relevant to social contact. These motivation-based attention allocation processes (see Duchowski, 2003; Henderson, 2007) imply that scenes containing elements relevant to achieve social contact goals should be detected more quickly and explored longer. Even though it is not always true that what is fixated is what is attentively processed (see, for instance, covert attention; see LaBerge, 1983; Posner, Snyder, & Davidson, 1980), Hoffman (1998) proposed that most often this is still the case at least preattentively. Thus, analyzing eye gazing allows one to assess the (un-)conscious initiation of social approach (or avoidance) responses. An eye-tracking experiment was conducted to examine the assumption that humans possess psychological mechanisms that enable them to approach, or if appropriate to avoid, social contact. A priming procedure was used to make salient potential costs, benefits, or neutral aspects of interpersonal contacts and thus unconsciously activate social approach or avoidance goals, or none. The induced goal orientation should manifest itself in different eyemovement patterns while one observes pictures containing social and nonsocial elements. Participants who are primed with potential costs (benefits) of social contacts should explore nonsocial (social) areas in the presented pictures longer than participants primed with benefits (costs) of interpersonal relationships. Therefore, the following hypotheses were experimentally tested: H1: When the costs of interpersonal contacts are cognitively available, one should be more sensitive to stimuli that allow the avoidance of social contact than when the benefits are available. H2: When the benefits of interpersonal contacts are cognitively available, one should be more sensitive to stimuli that allow the initiation of social contact than when the costs are available. Thus, a person to whom potential benefits of interpersonal contacts are available is predicted to quickly respond to and extensively explore those situational configurations that are relevant to their experimentally induced goal, namely, the initiation of social contact. A person to whom potential costs of interpersonal contacts are available, however, is predicted to quickly respond to and extensively explore those situational configurations that are relevant to their experimentally induced goal, namely, to avoid social contact.

3 154 J. Krajewski et al.: Effects on the Exploration of Goal-Relevant Stimuli Method Participants Fifty-seven students (18 male) from various fields of study took part in the experiment. All participants took part voluntarily. The mean age of the sample was years (SD = 4.00). Participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions (avoidance, approach, or control group). The test condition avoidance consisted of 19, the test condition approach consisted of 20, and the control group consisted of 18 participants. Groups were equivalent with regard to relevant demographic variables such as age, gender, and courses. Participants were tested individually and were paid cash for their participation. We told them that the purpose of the experiment was to assess the relation of certain personality characteristics, attitudes, and visual information processing strategies. We debriefed participants once finished. Procedures A priming procedure was used in order to induce social approach or avoidance goals (see e.g., Bargh, Gollwitzer, Lee-Chai, Barndollar, & Trötschel, 2001; Fitzsimons & Bargh, 2003). Three different questionnaires were given to three groups of participants (the avoidance, approach, and control groups). Besides 20 distracting items concerning personality traits and attitudes toward various entities (e.g., I am interested in music ) 10 dichotomous items were integrated into the questionnaires that dealt either with typical costs or typical benefits of interpersonal relationships, or with neutral aspects (e.g., costs (avoidance condition): Someone once stole money from me, I was once infected by another person, I once had to make a bitter compromise because of someone else ; benefits (approach condition): There was once a person who lent me money without wanting it back, Someone once cared for me when I was ill, I once got a good idea suggested by a friend ; neutral (control condition): I like to listen to the radio, When something goes wrong, I can easily relax myself, I am interested in playing video games ). The questionnaires were introduced as questionnaires measuring certain personality characteristics and attitudes. They were administered with the following instructions: In the following, statements about personality traits, attitudes, experiences, and behaviors are presented. Please read every single statement and decide whether the statement applies to you. Please mark your answer with a cross in the corresponding field labeled as yes or no. As intended, the questions provoked at least 8 out of 10 positive answers across all participants. It took participants about 5 minutes to complete the respective questionnaire. The proposed effects of this priming procedure were measured by three different eye-movement parameters indicating participants goal orientations. For this purpose, a high-speed, ultraprecise eye-tracker was used (iview-system, Sensomotoric Instruments, Teltow, Germany). Three parameters reflecting participants eye movements on five different pictures containing social as well as nonsocial flight- and avoidance-relevant areas were then charged to assess the unconscious initiation of social approach or avoidance responses. After having filled out the questionnaires, participants were asked to take a seat in front of the eye-tracker described above. Subsequently, the duration of participants cumulated fixations on social (first eye-movement parameter) and nonsocial (second eye-movement parameter) parts of five different colored pictures presented on the monitor for a period of 15 s were measured. The social and nonsocial parts are called areas of interest (AOI). Social AOI describe scenes of social interactions of three to five persons in daily situations, whereas nonsocial AOI show different opportunities for avoiding social contact, for example finding a pathway exiting the scene. Prior to each picture, a fixation cross was presented for a period of 4 s in the middle of the monitor. Participants were instructed to fixate on the cross and thereafter to freely explore the presented pictures. We also measured participants response latencies up to the first fixation in a nonsocial AOI (third eye-movement parameter). Participants response latencies up to the first fixation on a social AOI were not measured because most social AOI covered the middle of the presented pictures and thus the areas of the preceding fixation cross. The pictures filled up the whole monitor. The order of the pictures presented was automatically counterbalanced by the software used. A fixation was registered when an eye-movement did not exceed 1 visual angle in 120 ms. Participants eyes were scanned at a 200 Hz rate. The distance between participants eyes and the monitor was 70 cm. The monitor s resolution was pixels. The experiment took about 20 minutes. Statistical Analysis Three analyses of variance (ANOVAs) were carried out to examine the effects of induced goal-orientation (avoidance, approach, and control) on the three different parameters measuring participants eye movements. In addition, estimates of effect sizes are reported. Each ANOVA procedure was followed by the Tukey-HSD test for posthoc comparisons. The left picture in Figure 1 depicts a scanpath from a participant in the avoidance test condition. The right picture in the figure shows a scanpath from a participant in the approach condition. Social and nonsocial AOI are framed with bright lines. Fixations are marked as circles. The size of a circle represents the duration of the fixation. The dark lines between the circles represent eye-movement paths (saccades).

4 J. Krajewski et al.: Effects on the Exploration of Goal-Relevant Stimuli 155 Figure 1. Scanpaths of two participants avoidance test condition (left) and approach test condition (right). Results Effects of Goal Orientation on the Exploration of Social AOI The ANOVA on the fixation duration in social AOI showed a significant main effect of the priming, F(2, 54) = 4.16, p =.02, η 2 =.13. The Tukey-HSD test revealed that fixation durations were considerably lower in the avoidance test condition than they were in the approach group, MD (1/2) = 39.21, p =.02. The Tukey-HSD test revealed no significant differences between both the avoidance and approach test conditions and the control group, MD (1/3) = 23.52, p =.22; MD (2/3) = 15.69, p =.49. Mean values and standard deviations for all groups are depicted in Figure 2. Effects of Goal Orientation on the Exploration of Nonsocial AOI The ANOVA on nonsocial flight- and avoidance-relevant AOI showed a significant main effect of the priming, F(2, 54) = 3.29, p =.04, η 2 =.11. The Tukey-HSD test revealed that fixation durations were considerably higher in the avoidance test condition than they were in the approach group, (1/2) = 20.92, p =.04. The Tukey-HSD test revealed no significant difference between both the avoidance and approach test conditions and the control group, MD (1/3) = 15.26, p =.19, MD (2/3) = 5.66, p =.79. Mean values and standard deviations for all groups are depicted in Figure Avoidance Approach Control Figure 2. Percentage of the whole fixation time that accounted for social AOI cumulated over five different stimuli [% cum ], dependent upon goal orientation Avoidance Approach Control Figure 3. Percentage of the whole fixation time that accounted for non-social AOI cumulated over five different stimuli [% cum ], dependent upon goal orientation.

5 156 J. Krajewski et al.: Effects on the Exploration of Goal-Relevant Stimuli Effects of Goal Orientation on the Response Latency up to the First Fixation in a Nonsocial AOI The ANOVA on the response latency up to the first fixation in a nonsocial AOI showed a significant main effect of the priming, F(2, 54) = 16.26, p<.01, η 2 =.38. The Tukey- HSD test revealed that response latencies were considerably lower in the avoidance test condition than they were in the approach group, MD (1/2) = 13.47, p <.01. In addition, the Tukey-HSD test revealed a significant difference between the avoidance test condition and the control group, MD (1/3) = 8.70, p <.01. The Tukey-HSD test revealed no significant difference between the approach test condition and the control group, MD (2/3) = 4.78, p =.13. Mean values and standard deviations for all groups are depicted in Figure Avoidance Approach Control Figure 4. Duration in sec. up to the first fixation in a nonsocial AOI cumulated over five different stimuli [s cum ], dependent upon goal orientation. Discussion Participants who were primed with potential benefits of social contacts explored social AOI in the presented pictures significantly longer than participants who were primed with potential costs of interpersonal contacts. In addition, participants who were confronted with the costs of interpersonal contacts explored nonsocial (i.e., flight- and avoidance-relevant AOI) in the presented pictures significantly longer than participants who were primed with potential benefits of social contacts. Possibly due to high variance in responses the mean differences reached the significance level only between the two experimental groups, but not between the experimental groups and the control group. We did, however, find that participants who were primed with potential costs of interpersonal contacts took a significantly shorter period of time to discover nonsocial avoidance-relevant AOI in the presented material than participants who were primed with potential benefits of interpersonal contacts or who were primed with neutral aspects. In sum, under specific circumstances, humans show clear avoidance reactions to possible social contacts, even without their awareness. The effects shown were presumably based on automatic regulated goal-finding processes. Therefore, the results support the hypotheses and central assumptions of the underlying theoretical framework. Limitations Generally, evolutionary-based assumptions are difficult to test. In the present study it was not possible to demonstrate that the observed responses underpin psychological adaptations. Furthermore, we tested only eye-movement patterns on a given set of stimuli depicting social situations, provoked by an artificial priming procedure. Future research should examine social approach or avoidance behaviors in the context of real interpersonal contacts. Note, however, that the artificial nature of the procedure allowed us to test the predicted unconscious effects in a systematic and ethical manner. By means of the iview-system it was possible to noninvasively measure motivation-based perceptual processes with a satisfying degree of objectivity, reliability, and validity. Contrary to self-reports, for instance, eye-tracking is less prone to social desirability and other response biases. In addition, the measure is less prone to confounds compared to alternative indicators of motivation-based perceptual processes such as response latencies to motive-congruent words. Furthermore, the tracking of eye-movements allows a more standardized procedure for measuring motivation-based cognitive processes than procedures that rely on imagined or remembered situations. Moreover, it remains unclear which cognitive processes are responsible for the effects. The experiment conducted did not aim to test the underlying processes regulating the hypothetical psychological mechanisms. Evidence for these processes can be found, however, in studies and elaborated models of top-down processes that focus on for instance selective excitatory processes of the early visual sensory nerves (see e.g., Metzinger, 2003). Moreover, it was assumed that the priming procedure used in the present study activates social goals. However, following Bargh (2006), a prime preactivates numerous complexly interwoven concepts (e.g., motives, goals, stereotypes, or mood). Empirical findings dealing with priming thus show multifaceted effects depending on the variables chosen by the experimenter. Bargh (2006) resumes: In fact, it has been shown that the identical priming event can have a variety of qualitatively different effects (p. 150). In this study, we cannot rule out that the priming

6 J. Krajewski et al.: Effects on the Exploration of Goal-Relevant Stimuli 157 procedure may also have affected mood. For example, participants primed with negative social experiences could have become more anxious which leads to higher vigilance and consequently, to a quicker and more widespread scanning of the environment (e.g., Mathews, 1993). As a result, both of social and nonsocial AOIs would have been scanned more comprehensively. Note, however, that a mood explanation would not contradict our conceptual framework. We were open to the idea that mood- or affectladen processes are involved to set the postulated approach or avoidance responses into gear. Future research, however, should examine settings in which the influence of affect and mood could be assessed and the extent to which they play a role in eye-tracking processes. Future research should also examine what types of biological costs and benefits can influence human decisions about social contacts. Precise models are needed to predict how the different costs and benefits are calculated in certain situations and charged against each other by individuals. Apart from that, being confronted with aversive aspects of interpersonal contacts could likewise lead to an extensive exploration of social AOI, for instance, in order to assess possible dangers thoroughly. Thus, future research can also be directed to better discriminate such aspects conceptually and methodically to further enlighten the effects obtained in this study. Concluding Remarks Our primary purpose was to show that there are unconscious facets of social affiliation and social information processing that are comparatively neglected in recent affiliation research. Mainly, our concept points to mechanisms that could help an individual to avoid social contacts when being confronted with potential interpersonal costs. 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