Perception is solitary. After all, it is the individual alone who feels, hears, tastes, smells and sees. Yet, while the phenomenology of engaging with the world through our senses is restricted to subjective sensations, those sensations are often experienced in a social context. Do social forces change how an individual interacts with the environment and responds to incoming information? We present and discuss a recently discovered phenomenon: people’s eye movements and focus of attention change with their belief that they are looking at objects alone or together with somebody else. Research on ‘joint perception’ provides evidence for the pervasive effect of social context, influencing psychological processes from cognition to low-level perception.