Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

The present study examined the effect of visual attention and personality traits on decision-making in digital environ-ments. Fifty-nine individuals were asked how likely they would be to share 40 distinct memes (photos with superimposedcaptions) on social media while their eye movements were tracked. Results showed that the likelihood of sharing memesincreased as fixation duration to the text of the meme increased; conversely, the likelihood of sharing decreased as visualattention to the image of the meme increased. In addition, agreeableness predicted an increased likelihood of sharingmemes. These results indicate that differences in perceptual processing of digital content and specific personality traitsaffect the likelihood that an individual will share said content on social media platforms.