Seeing eye to “egg”: Can attention and memory be impacted by “social” objects?

An oft-used distinction when studying the effect of social content on cognitive processes is to create a division between people/faces as social, and objects as non-social; however, this practice presumes that objects lack social value. In contrast, evidence from other research domains suggest that objects can communicate social information, such as CDs or cars which can communicate information about the owner’s identity. Thus, here we explored whether attentional and spatial memory biases exist for objects with a social versus non-social value. 84 participants (either primed to think about objects as social or not) engaged in a visual search task and a memory task that included objects belonging to one of three categories: (i) identity objects—such as a menorah—which are affiliated with an individual’s identity, (ii) situation objects—such as a board game—which are used in social situations, and (iii) neutral objects—such as a toothbrush—which are not reflective of one’s identity nor used in social situations. Participants were (i) faster to locate identity and situation objects compared to neutral objects, (ii) were the most accurate at remembering the location of the situation objects, and (iii) the social prime was not necessary to show differences in attention and memory for the three object categories. These findings demonstrate that not all objects are attended to or remembered equally, and have important implications when considering the objects used for drawing conclusions about social versus non-social processes.