Tracking the Leader: Gaze Behavior in Group Interactions
Francesca Capozzi,
Cigdem Beyan,
Antonio Pierro,
Atesh Koul,
Vittorio Murino,
Stefano Livi,
Andrew P. Bayliss,
Jelena Ristic,
Cristina Becchio
Affiliations
Francesca Capozzi
Department of Psychology, McGill University, Montreal, QC H3A 1B1, Canada
Cigdem Beyan
Pattern Analysis and Computer Vision, (PAVIS), Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Genova 16152, Italy
Antonio Pierro
Department of Social and Developmental Psychology, University of Rome “La Sapienza”, Rome 00185, Italy
Atesh Koul
Cognition, Motion and Neuroscience Unit, (C’MoN), Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Center for Human Technologies, Via Enrico Melen 83, 16152 Genova, Italy
Vittorio Murino
Pattern Analysis and Computer Vision, (PAVIS), Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Genova 16152, Italy; Department of Computer Science, University of Verona, Verona 37134, Italy
Stefano Livi
Department of Social and Developmental Psychology, University of Rome “La Sapienza”, Rome 00185, Italy
Andrew P. Bayliss
School of Psychology, University of East Anglia, Norwich, Norfolk NR4 7TJ, UK
Jelena Ristic
Department of Psychology, McGill University, Montreal, QC H3A 1B1, Canada
Cristina Becchio
Cognition, Motion and Neuroscience Unit, (C’MoN), Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Center for Human Technologies, Via Enrico Melen 83, 16152 Genova, Italy; Department of Psychology, University of Torino, Torino 10123, Italy; Corresponding author
Summary: Can social gaze behavior reveal the leader during real-world group interactions? To answer this question, we developed a novel tripartite approach combining (1) computer vision methods for remote gaze estimation, (2) a detailed taxonomy to encode the implicit semantics of multi-party gaze features, and (3) machine learning methods to establish dependencies between leadership and visual behaviors. We found that social gaze behavior distinctively identified group leaders. Crucially, the relationship between leadership and gaze behavior generalized across democratic and autocratic leadership styles under conditions of low and high time-pressure, suggesting that gaze can serve as a general marker of leadership. These findings provide the first direct evidence that group visual patterns can reveal leadership across different social behaviors and validate a new promising method for monitoring natural group interactions. : Social Interaction; Neuroscience; Behavioral Neuroscience Subject Areas: Social Interaction, Neuroscience, Behavioral Neuroscience
