The power of subliminal and supraliminal eye contact on social decision making: An individual-difference perspective

• Eye contact interacted with SVO to affect participants’ social decision making.
• Regardless of the awareness level, eye contact increased the Prosocials’ cooperation.
• Supra- vs. subliminal eye contact led to distinct decision making for the Proselfs.
• The Proselfs cooperated less following subliminal eye contact (v. no contact).

We conducted two experiments to explore how social decision making is influenced by the interaction of eye contact and social value orientation (SVO). Specifically, participants with a Prosocial (Prosocials) or a Proself (Proselfs) SVO played Prisoner Dilemma games with a computer partner following supraliminal (Experiment 1) and subliminal (Experiment 2) direct gaze from that partner. Results showed that participants made more cooperative decisions after supraliminal eye contact than no eye contact, and the effect only existed for the Prosocials but not for the Proselfs. Nevertheless, when the computer partner made a subliminal eye contact with the participants, although more cooperative choices were found among the Prosocials following subliminal eye contact, relative to no contact, the Proselfs demonstrated reduced cooperation rates. These findings suggest that Prosocials and Proselfs interpreted eye contact in distinct ways at different levels of awareness, which led to various social decision making.