Australian psychologists have discovered that video surveillance enhances people's ability to detect faces. When experiment participants believed they were being watched through cameras, they responded to faces more quickly than when there were no cameras. As the scientists report in Neuroscience of Consciousness, this effect was not associated with a general increase in vigilance or attention.
People tend to try to look better than they actually are in the eyes of others. This also occurs when a person believes they are being watched. For example, under the gaze of others (even imaginary ones), people playing economic games become more generous and steal and cheat less. Research has also shown that perceived or actual surveillance makes people uncomfortable, increases vigilance, and negatively impacts work performance.
Researchers at the University of Technology in Sydney, led by Kiley Seymour, set out to determine how perceived surveillance affects healthy people's ability to recognize human faces or gaze. They conducted an experiment in which they seated participants in front of a stereoscope and a monitor and showed them two images—one to each eye. A bright, high-contrast abstract image was shown to the dominant eye, while the other eye was shown a human face, looking straight ahead or to the side. The contrast of the face increased from zero to one hundred percent over the first second, while the contrast of the second image decreased from one hundred to zero. The face was positioned to the left or right of a red dot in the center of the image. As soon as the subject recognized any part of the face, they were asked to use the arrow keys to indicate which side of the red dot it was located on.
One group of participants was observed overtly: there were several cameras in the room, and before the experiment, they were shown a live feed from cameras in an adjacent room. They were also asked to sign a consent form to be observed during the experiment. The control group completed the test in a room without cameras and did not sign a consent form. A total of 54 people participated in the experiment. The researchers measured the time it took the participants to detect a face. People who believed they were being observed reacted almost a second faster: they noticed a face looking straight ahead after 2.87 seconds, and a face looking away after 3.16 seconds. Participants in the control group needed 3.65 and 3.93 seconds, respectively.
The scientists then conducted a control experiment with a new sample of 42 people. This experiment replicated the main one, but instead of faces, participants were shown neutral stimuli—Gabor grids. In this case, there were no differences in results between the observed group and the control group. In other words, observation did not enhance attention in general, but rather their sensitivity to human faces.
Pre- and post-experiment surveys of participants revealed that their anxiety levels remained unchanged after the experience. This meant that the results could not be explained by a general increase in anxiety when in front of cameras. There was also no difference in overall anxiety levels between subjects in the experimental and control groups. The authors concluded that unconscious mechanisms of facial processing may be altered when a person believes they are being observed.
Previously, scientists described the neural mechanism responsible for processing faces.
