Eyeballing Friendly Headlights : Analyzing Gaze Behavior for Anthropomorphic Car Faces using Spatiotemporal Scan Statistics

Anthropomorphism, the tendency to apply human traits to non-living objects, is a widespread principle in product design. In an eye tracking experiment, we investigated how gaze patterns for manipulated car faces changed with respect to the affective state displayed by the car. Going beyond traditional region-of-interest methods (ROI), we implemented a novel approach for analyzing eye tracking data based on spatiotemporal scan analyses that overcome shortcomings of the ROI methodology. Our results showed that threatening headlights attract fewer gazes than non-threatening design variations, which can be seen in general accordance with theories of biological preparedness.