Dominant as Underdogs: Inefficient Search for Dominant-Looking Faces

Detecting dominant individuals within crowds is crucial for human survival, prompting investigation into the tension between quick detection and careful recognition of dominant faces. In our visual search tasks, participants located a target face with a specific identity, with dominance being task-irrelevant. Targets varied in dominance (high or low), and the dominance congruency between targets and distractors was manipulated. Results showed more efficient search when targets differed from distractors by dominance, suggesting leverage of latent dominance contrast. Surprisingly, searching for high-dominance faces exhibited lower efficiency. Experiment 2 replicated these findings and incorporated eye-tracking, revealing longer distractor inspection, more revisits to target faces, and prolonged identification times for high-dominance face searches. Experiment 3 showed search inefficiency even with only dominant faces’ eye regions, underscoring the role of local features. Our findings offer a nuanced perspective on how perceived dominance influences cognition and behavior, challenging the assumed ease of dominance detection.