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  • Review Article
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Mechanisms for individual, group-based and crowd-based attention to social information

Nature Reviews Psychology volume 1, pages 721–732 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

Two or more interacting individuals make up a social group. In this Review, we show that human attention plays a key part in the selection, management and maintenance of social interactions between individual members of social groups of any size. Three attentional mechanisms are presented here. The individual cue-selection mechanism facilitates the selection of social cues, such as gaze, facial or head information, from individual group members. The group-based selection mechanism enables selection based on the perceived quality of social cues derived from individual group members or the emerging interactions between individual group members. Finally, the crowd-based selection mechanism enables selection based on an overall representation of the social information derived from assessing the majority of consistent cues in the crowd. The three attentional mechanisms are used flexibly, interchangeably and dynamically as a function of group size and the ability to individuate group members.

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Fig. 1: Classic and the emerging interactive social attention paradigms.
Fig. 2: Unidirectional and bidirectional gaze-based communicative actions.
Fig. 3: Group-based selection versus crowd-based selection.
Fig. 4: Individual cue selection, group-based selection, and crowd-based selection mechanisms.

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Acknowledgements

The authors were supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council (J.R.), the Social Sciences Engineering Council (J.R. and F.C.), the McGill University’s William Dawson Scholar award (J.R.) and the Fonds de recherche du Québec (F.C.).

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  1. Department of Psychology, McGill University, Montréal, Quebéc, Canada

    Jelena Ristic

  2. Department of Psychology, Université du Québec à Montréal, Montréal, Quebéc, Canada

    Francesca Capozzi

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Cognitive ethology

A scientific approach that seeks to understand how human cognition unfolds in real-life natural conditions.

Second-person neuroscience

A scientific approach that seeks to understand how reciprocal and emotional engagement with other people influences human cognition and social behaviour.

Spectator-based paradigms

Paradigms that aim to study basic perceptual and evaluative processes using static displays of stimuli in highly controlled laboratory settings.

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Ristic, J., Capozzi, F. Mechanisms for individual, group-based and crowd-based attention to social information. Nat Rev Psychol 1, 721–732 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-022-00118-z

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