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Do you pay attention to details when you look at someone's face?
A new study claims that it might be a sign of a psychopathology of some level.
Let's find out more.
People's inclinations to pay attention to human faces in pictures may be correlated with their personality traits and even some levels of psychopathology, as indicated by a study published in PLOS ONE.
The study involved 120 people, predominantly young ones, who viewed 20 pictures of people in visually-busy environments while their attention was evaluated.
A cursor-based tool was used, with the images initially blurred and becoming clear only within a small 20-pixel radius around the cursor, which people could move.
Subsequently, participants completed a questionnaire assessing the "Big Five" personality traits.
The questionnaire also inquired about different aspects of psychopathology, including social anxiety, depression, empathy, alexithymia, and specific social values.
The findings revealed that extraversion, agreeableness, and openness to experience exhibited positive correlations with a heightened focus on faces.
Conversely, participants who scored higher on specific facets of psychopathology such as social anxiety, depression, and alexithymia showed to direct less attention toward faces.