Humans integrate gaze and decision cues for inferring preferences in social interactions

Authors

Gopnarayan, M. N., Bavard, S., Stuchly, E., Gluth, S.

Abstract

Social decision-making depends on inferring others' hidden preferences from observable behavior. Yet it remains unclear how humans combine choices with process cues such as response times and gaze when learning about others in real-time interaction. Here, we combine a novel multi-attribute bargaining task with eye-tracking and show that multiple decision-process cues support preference inference. Across 75 buyer-seller dyads, buyers' acceptance rates tracked offer utility, rejection speed reflected decision confidence, and first fixations preferentially targeted the highest-weighted attribute. Sellers adapted subsequent offers using choices, response times, and, when available, gaze cues. A hierarchical inference and choice model suggested that sellers balanced expected utility with expected information gain and updated their beliefs in a Bayesian manner. Although gaze access did not improve overall performance, it changed how sellers used attentional information. These findings shed light on how humans infer others' hidden preferences from decision dynamics in real-time social interaction.

Preprint server: bioRxiv
The authors list and abstract were imported from bioRxiv on 11 Jul 2026.

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