Social attention is enhanced by facial emotions even for occluded faces

Human attention is spontaneously oriented in the direction of eye gaze, and more strongly if the face displays an emotional expression. However, the importance of perceiving the whole face for this gaze cuing process and its emotional enhancement remains unknown. We studied this question in two preregistered experiments, where we presented participants with averted eye gaze within faces which reacted emotionally with fearful and happy (Experiment 1) or disgusted and surprised (Experiment 2) expressions. To study the contribution of the whole face, half of the faces were occluded by a face mask and half of the faces were unoccluded. In both experiments, eye gaze produced a robust gaze cuing effect which was enhanced for faces with emotional expressions. Critically, gaze cuing and its emotional enhancement persisted under face occlusion, demonstrating the sufficiency of the upper face for the social and emotional orienting. These findings show that gaze cuing as well as its emotional enhancement does not depend on seeing the whole face.