Neural and Affective Effects of Gaze Versus Arrow Cues During Social Exclusion

Social exclusion threatens fundamental psychological needs and elicits neural responses indexed by the P3 event-related potential (ERP) in the Cyberball paradigm, a virtual ball-tossing task used to study ostracism. Prior findings suggest that direct gaze amplifies exclusion-related P3 effects, but whether this modulation reflects social-communicative processing or spatial cueing has not been established. Direct gaze signals engagement and affiliative intent whereas averted gaze signals withdrawal, a distinction that arrows carrying equivalent spatial information do not convey. Here we will contrast human gaze cues (direct vs. averted) with non-social arrow cues (toward vs. away) matched for spatial information during real-time Cyberball exclusion while recording EEG. We predict that only gaze cues will modulate the P3 exclusion effect, with direct gaze enhancing P3 amplitude replicating Yang et al. (2025), whereas arrow cues will show no directional modulation. We further predict that the averted-gaze group will report greater negative mood than the direct-gaze group with no comparable difference between arrow groups, while Need Threat Questionnaire scores will remain unaffected by cue type or direction. This registered report tests whether gaze-mediated modulation of exclusion-related neural processing requires a social agent or merely a directional spatial signal.