A prosocial function of head-gaze aversion and head-cocking in common marmosets

Gaze aversion is a behavior adopted by several mammalian and non-mammalian species in response to eye contact, and is usually interpreted as a reaction to a perceived threat. Unlike many other primate species, common marmosets ( Callithrix jacchus ) are thought to have a high tolerance for direct ga...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Primates 2022-09, Vol.63 (5), p.535-546
Main Authors: Spadacenta, Silvia, Dicke, Peter W., Thier, Peter
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animal Ecology
Animals
Aversion
Babies
Behavior
Behavioral Sciences
Biomedical and Life Sciences
Caregivers
Conspecifics
Evolutionary Biology
Eye
Eye contact
Eye movements
Head
Head movement
Life Sciences
Mammals
Monkeys & apes
Original
Original Article
Primates
Sensory stimulation
Zoology
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Summary:Gaze aversion is a behavior adopted by several mammalian and non-mammalian species in response to eye contact, and is usually interpreted as a reaction to a perceived threat. Unlike many other primate species, common marmosets ( Callithrix jacchus ) are thought to have a high tolerance for direct gaze, barely exhibiting gaze avoidance towards conspecifics and humans. Here we show that this does not hold for marmosets interacting with a familiar experimenter who suddenly establishes eye contact in a playful interaction (peekaboo). Video footage synchronously recorded from the perspective of the marmoset and the experimenter showed that the monkeys consistently alternated between eye contact and head-gaze aversion, and that these responses were often preceded by head-cocking. We hypothesize that this behavioral strategy helps marmosets to temporarily disengage from emotionally overwhelming social stimulation due to sight of another individual’s face, in order to prepare for a new round of affiliative face-to-face interactions.
ISSN:0032-8332
1610-7365
DOI:10.1007/s10329-022-00997-z