Page 56 - Demo

54Chapter 3ProcedureAfter filling in several demographic questionnaires, the researchers took profile photos of the participants against a white background and also collectedauditory and olfactory material, which will not be described in this paper. Hereafter, all participants completed a battery of cognitive tasks (thefull methods are described in the Supplemental Material; preregistered using the AsPredicted database #36,394). Here, we focus on the dot-probe,preferential looking task, and attractiveness rating task. All tasks were controlled by an E-prime script (Eprime version 3; Psychology Software Tools,Pittsburgh, PA) in conjunction with the E-Prime Extensions for Tobii Pro(EET) for the preferential looking task. All stimuli were presented against agray background. Furthermore, all tasks were presented on an 23.8-inch HPEliteDisplay 243m monitor with 1680 × 1050 resolution and 60Hz refreshrate.In the dot-probe task, participants briefly view two pictures of the presented on the display, one of which is then replaced by a dot. Participantsare asked to indicate the location of the dot (right vs. left) using the corresponding keyboard keys. In our study, all stimuli consisted of the oppositesex participants’ profile photos from the same group. In the case that onegroup consisted of fewer than 10 individuals, pictures of opposite-sex participants from the previous group were added to keep the number of trialsconsistent across participants. It is important to note that participants hadnot met their partners at that point in the experimental procedure andthus could not have known that these were replacement pictures. Eachtrial started with a centrally presented fixation cross for a jittered duration between 1020-1260 in increments of 60ms. Next, participants viewedthe pictures of two opposite-sex participants for 300ms, one of which wasthen replaced by a dot until the participant indicated the correct locationusing the corresponding keyboard keys (z for left, m for right). Every trialended with an inter-trial interval between 1380-1620ms in increments of60ms. After completing 10 practice trials, participants viewed all possiblecombinations of the opposite-sex participants’ photos (i.e., 45 dyads) twice,so each participant in a dyad would be presented as the probe (i.e., thepicture replaced by the dot) and the distractor picture (i.e., the picture notreplaced by the dot) leading to a total of 100 trials. Location of the probeand distractor pictures was pseudo-randomized across the trials. The tasklasted approximately 8 minutes.In the preferential looking task, in each trial, participants viewed twoof the opposite-sex participants’ pictures while their eye movements wererecorded using an X2-60 Tobii eye-tracker (Tobii Pro, 2014) at a samplingrate of 60Hz. Participants placed their chin on a chin rest at approximately50cm from the monitor. Each trial started with a centrally presented fixationcross for 720ms, followed by the two pictures presented on the display forProcedureAfter filling in several demographic questionnaires, the researchers took profile photos of the participants against a white background and also collectedauditory and olfactory material, which will not be described in this paper. Hereafter, all participants completed a battery of cognitive tasks (thefull methods are described in the Supplemental Material; preregistered using the AsPredicted database #36,394). Here, we focus on the dot-probe,preferential looking task, and attractiveness rating task. All tasks were controlled by an E-prime script (Eprime version 3; Psychology Software Tools,Pittsburgh, PA) in conjunction with the E-Prime Extensions for Tobii Pro(EET) for the preferential looking task. All stimuli were presented against agray background. Furthermore, all tasks were presented on an 23.8-inch HPEliteDisplay 243m monitor with 1680 × 1050 resolution and 60Hz refreshrate.In the dot-probe task, participants briefly view two pictures of the presented on the display, one of which is then replaced by a dot. Participantsare asked to indicate the location of the dot (right vs. left) using the corresponding keyboard keys. In our study, all stimuli consisted of the oppositesex participants’ profile photos from the same group. In the case that onegroup consisted of fewer than 10 individuals, pictures of opposite-sex participants from the previous group were added to keep the number of trialsconsistent across participants. It is important to note that participants hadnot met their partners at that point in the experimental procedure andthus could not have known that these were replacement pictures. Eachtrial started with a centrally presented fixation cross for a jittered duration between 1020-1260 in increments of 60ms. Next, participants viewedthe pictures of two opposite-sex participants for 300ms, one of which wasthen replaced by a dot until the participant indicated the correct locationusing the corresponding keyboard keys (z for left, m for right). Every trialended with an inter-trial interval between 1380-1620ms in increments of60ms. After completing 10 practice trials, participants viewed all possiblecombinations of the opposite-sex participants’ photos (i.e., 45 dyads) twice,so each participant in a dyad would be presented as the probe (i.e., thepicture replaced by the dot) and the distractor picture (i.e., the picture notreplaced by the dot) leading to a total of 100 trials. Location of the probeand distractor pictures was pseudo-randomized across the trials. The tasklasted approximately 8 minutes.In the preferential looking task, in each trial, participants viewed twoof the opposite-sex participants’ pictures while their eye movements wererecorded using an X2-60 Tobii eye-tracker (Tobii Pro, 2014) at a samplingrate of 60Hz. Participants placed their chin on a chin rest at approximately50cm from the monitor. Each trial started with a centrally presented fixationcross for 720ms, followed by the two pictures presented on the display for3000ms. Similar to the dot-probe task, in the case that one group consistedof fewer than 10 individuals, pictures of opposite-sex participants from theprevious group were added to keep the number of trials consistent acrossparticipants. Every trial ended with a jittered ITI between 1380-1620ms inincrements of 60ms. After performing 3 practice trials, participants completed 45 trials. The task lasted approximately 6 minutes.In addition to the tasks described above, participants rated the attractiveness of all of the stimuli on a 7-point scale. The stimuli were presentedsequentially for 3s on a computer monitor, after which the participants couldindicate how attractive they found the person in the stimulus. The order ofthe tasks was randomized between participants.After completing the tasks, participants went on a maximum of ten 4-minute speed dates (Perilloux et al., 2012; A. J. Lee et al., 2020). Men andwomen were seated at opposite sides of a table, their view of their partneroccluded by a barrier. At the start of each date, the barrier was removed,and following the ring of the bell, participants had a four-minute date withtheir partner. After 4 minutes, participants indicated the date outcome,i.e., whether they would be interested in going on another date with them(yes/no); their prediction about whether their partner would be interested togo on another date with them (yes/no); and whether they knew their partnerbefore the date (yes/no). Furthermore, we asked participants to indicatehow attractive they found their partner (7-point scale) and how attractivethey considered them as a long-term mate (7-point scale). It should benoted that these questions referred to attractiveness in general, and notspecifically physical attractiveness. Participants had one minute to fill inthe questionnaire after each date. Next, male participants rotated to theirnext prospective partner. After completing all possible date combinations,participants were debriefed about the purposes of the study.Data processingDot-probeIn total, 58 participants completed the dot-probe task. In the second femalegroup, we could not collect dot-probe data due to a technical issue. Intotal, we had 5220 datapoints for the dot-probe task before data filtering.One participant did not complete the pre-date attractiveness rating task.Therefore, we excluded this participant’s data (90 trials) from the analysisthat investigated the effect of attractiveness on immediate attention, leavingus with data from 57 participants. Next, we excluded outliers by subject: asa lower boundary, we used 200ms for anticipatory reaction times (Whelan,2008). We calculated the upper limit by subject following Leys et al. (2013):we calculated the median absolute deviation (MAD) per subject and themedian RT per subject. We then used a moderately conservative criterionIliana Samara 17x24.indd 54 08-04-2024 16:35