PMC

(a) Masculinized (leftmost faces in the male and female pairs) and feminized (rightmost faces in the male and female pairs) prototype faces used in our experiment. (b) The gaze-cuing task. The figure shows an example of a trial where gaze direction and target location are congruent.

The significant interaction between the effects of face type and viewing time on gaze cuing. Squares show the mean gaze-cuing effect (ms) for each condition and error bars show s.e.m. The gaze-cuing effect for masculinized faces was significantly greater than that for feminized faces at the 200 ms viewing time, but not at the 400 or 800 ms viewing times, suggesting that masculinity influences reflexive short-term cuing. Consistent with this proposal, significant gaze-cuing effects for masculinized faces were observed at the 200 and 400 ms viewing times, but not at the 800 ms viewing time and there was a significant linear effect of viewing time on gaze cuing for masculinized faces. By contrast, there was a significant gaze-cuing effect for feminized faces at the 800 ms viewing time only and the linear effect of viewing time on gaze cuing for feminized faces was not significant. Black squared line, masculinized faces; grey squared line, feminized faces.