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Published online on October 30, 2006, 10.1073/pnas.0605678103
PNAS | November 7, 2006 | vol. 103 | no. 45 | 17048-17052


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BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES / SOCIAL SCIENCES / PSYCHOLOGY / PSYCHOLOGY
A gender- and sexual orientation-dependent spatial attentional effect of invisible images

Yi Jiang*, Patricia Costello{dagger}, Fang Fang*, Miner Huang{ddagger}, and Sheng He*,§

*Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, 75 East River Parkway, Minneapolis, MN 55455; {dagger}Department of Psychology, Gustavus Adolphus College, 800 West College Avenue, St. Peter, MN 56082; and {ddagger}Department of Psychology, Sun Yat-Sen University, West Xingang Road, Guangzhou 510275, People's Republic of China

Edited by Dale Purves, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC, and approved September 19, 2006 (received for review July 7, 2006)

Human observers are constantly bombarded with a vast amount of information. Selective attention helps us to quickly process what is important while ignoring the irrelevant. In this study, we demonstrate that information that has not entered observers' consciousness, such as interocularly suppressed (invisible) erotic pictures, can direct the distribution of spatial attention. Furthermore, invisible erotic information can either attract or repel observers' spatial attention depending on their gender and sexual orientation. While unaware of the suppressed pictures, heterosexual males' attention was attracted to invisible female nudes, heterosexual females' attention was attracted to invisible male nudes, gay males behaved similarly to heterosexual females, and gay/bisexual females performed in-between heterosexual males and females.

awareness | interocular suppression | attention

Author contributions: Y.J., F.F., M.H., and S.H. designed research; Y.J. and P.C. performed research; Y.J. and S.H. analyzed data; and Y.J., P.C., and S.H. wrote the paper.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

This article is a PNAS direct submission.

§To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: sheng{at}umn.edu

© 2006 by The National Academy of Sciences of the USA


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