Attentional gaze dynamics in group interactions

Group interactions influence human social and cognitive function. However, the non-verbal vehicles of that influence remain poorly understood. To address this question, here we present a taxonomy of interactive non-verbal attentional gaze behaviours – social referencing, participation, and mutual engagement – which we captured and characterized during live three-person interactions. Experiment 1 measured how each of these non-verbal indices predicted both the groups’ social dynamic (in terms of leadership perception) and later individual group member’s behaviour (in terms of gaze following magnitudes). The data indicated that the three attentional gaze behaviours (i) reliably reflected the groups’ nonverbal dynamics, (ii) predicted the groups’ social dynamics, and (iii) connected meaningfully with individual members’ behaviour. Experiment 2 confirmed that these group-to-individual links were dependent on individuals participating in a prior group interaction. Thus, our taxonomy of nonverbal attentional gaze behaviours characterizes both group and individual function well, and as such provides a methodological foundation for future investigations of non-verbal group dynamics and their links with individual behaviour.