Eye contact marks the rise and fall of shared attention in conversation
pnas.org
pnas.org
My another strategy is to make occasional eye contact while blurring my vision. To them, I'm making eye contact, whereas for me, it's not that different when I'm looking at the corner.
If you think people can't tell the difference you're gravely mistaken. I also have issues with this sort of thing, but it just requires additional work on my part. Assuming your conversation partner can't read is almost invariably a mistake.
I'll usually close my eyes and nod along to what they're saying.
I've had many-a-day playing some relaxing/intense video games, all the while having very in-depth conversations with both people online (no eye contact there) as well as with people in the same room who were also playing video games.
People that think you are not paying attention just need to both learn and understand that not everybody is the same in how brain functions work; we are also taught to take notes in lectures as well, and as far as I recall, there was no staring the lecturer in the eyes while I was writing shit down... (and then mulling over data and questioning as needed)
There are some people though, who are clearly very socially apt who almost stare at you while they keep talking, which actually seems weird to me. Firstly, what are they looking at? It seems kind of shameless to say it crassly. Secondly, they don't gesticulate with their eyes, which makes them harder to read.
The entire idea that someone has a problem with "holding eye contact" is misguided in my opinion. It doesn't explain what you could do to fix it, and focusing on where you are looking is most certainly going to make it worse because your visual attention is a low-level function that is supposed to work unconsciously. What one might have a problem with is not caring about the person you're talking to, or whether you catch some vague implication, or that they understand exactly where you're coming from. And if that's the problem, it's at least possible to work out some kind of solution for oneself.
I've overcome this to a degree with a lot of practise, but it's not my comfort zone.
Which, I think, makes it look like I’m looking at their chest because the women I talk to almost invariably adjust their shirt in a way that suggests they’ve become uncomfortable (because they think I’m looking at their chest)
Looking intensely at someone's lips is at times the prelude to a kiss. I think this ambiguity makes them uncomfortable.
EDIT: typo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_contact#Cultural_differenc...
I still have to basically look at someone’s temple to get by, even a decade later. The discomfort of making eye contact is just so ingrained now.
I had a boss who said he only hires a certain ethnic group because they always take on more work and never say no.
He had 2 of these people end up in hospital and a formal accusation of bullying against him... my conclusion was, he'd narrowed on a culture that is averse to social challenge / conflict. Where saying "no" would be socially unacceptable.
But he wasn't aware of the flip-side... that the manager is then responsible for judging the situation and not making direct requests that are impossible to refuse.
Many of my other Indian coworkers are always too scared to push back in any form, and many of my Indian friends back in India would work till the early hours of the morning regularly.
I’m lucky in the sense that I know to push back often when something doesn’t feel right or is illogical to me. Ironically I was often chided in high school for that as teachers would suggest that this would be bad for my career. It’s actually been the best thing for it, letting me become system architects at multiple large companies. But I see where they were coming from, in that the same attitude would have burned me if I’d stayed.
You assume he cares. Assuming the person across from you gives a crap about you is a regularly fatal one.
Humans are not basically good. They are basically greedy.
Also, psychos tend to concentrate in certain places. If you're in a board room, or hanging out with a bunch of surgeons, perhaps it's rational to assume everybody else there is a psycho.
It's worth noting that they're not always opposing. Sometimes empathy makes us feel better when others feel good, and the negative impact on ourselves can be more than countered by the good feeling from making others happier.
It's more complex than that, albeit not much. If you are in a hurry skip to figure 3. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.1600451
https://ask.metafilter.com/55153/Whats-the-middle-ground-bet...
> But he wasn't aware of the flip-side... that the manager is then responsible for judging the situation and not making direct requests that are impossible to refuse.
He was fully aware of the "flip-side." He explicitly admitted he's hiring people solely with a cultural predisposition towards "never saying no." He can ask anything of them knowing it's impossible for them to refuse, even if it kills them.
It's interesting that millions of people will probably read stuff about "eye contact = trust/attention", when in fact this is a complex topic.
Reminds me of the pseudoscience on how "touching your face or nose is a sign of deceit". Turns out almost everyone is no better than chance at spotting deceit. But judges, cops, school teachers etc... have all been relying on this kind rule to change the course of other people's lives.
The tail is wagging the dog in this study. The study fundamentally fails to validly measure what it claims to measure. It's measuring the perception of attention, not attention itself.
I only look at their face to signal that I'm paying attention to them, but if I'm looking at their face, I'm probably paying attention to looking at their face not at what they're actually saying. It's a very conscious move on my part to sacrifice my actual ability to pay attention to give off the perception of paying attention. If I want to both pay attention and look like I'm paying attention, I write notes.
>186 subjects comprising 93 dyads (mean age: 19.38 y; 120 females) participated. Subjects were recruited from Dartmouth College
Also a rather WEIRD sample which is actually a major issue in a study like this since it's measuring something rooted in cultural perceptions.
> In 2008, Arnett pointed out that most articles in American Psychological Association journals were about U.S. populations when U.S. citizens are only 5% of the world's population. He complained that psychologists had no basis for assuming psychological processes to be universal and generalizing research findings to the rest of the global population.[279] In 2010, Henrich, Heine, and Norenzayan reported a bias in conducting psychology studies with participants from "WEIRD" ("Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic") societies.[280][281] Henrich et al. found that "96% of psychological samples come from countries with only 12% of the world’s population" (p. 63). The article gave examples of results that differ significantly between people from WEIRD and tribal cultures, including the Müller-Lyer illusion. Arnett (2008), Altmaier and Hall (2008) and Morgan-Consoli et al. (2018) view the Western bias in research and theory as a serious problem considering psychologists are increasingly applying psychological principles developed in WEIRD regions in their research, clinical work, and consultation with populations around the world.[279][282][283] In 2018, Rad, Martingano, and Ginges showed that nearly a decade after Henrich et al.'s paper, over 80% of the samples used in studies published in the journal Psychological Science employed WEIRD samples. Moreover, their analysis showed that several studies did not fully disclose the origin of their samples; the authors offered a set of recommendations to editors and reviewers to reduce WEIRD bias.[284]
I have sympathy for people who have been institutionally censored and I feel properly guilty when we are interrupting them. But some people just go on and on, and/or telegraph false finishes, then try to invoke the same kind of courtesy when they are cut off.
I'd like to see a stab at a theory that explains how conversation actually works. Intuitively, it feels like a hack built on top of systems designed for acting in the world.
I think social position is written on the face. The labiofacial folds measure exclusion (deep lines indicate social isolation/discomfort, no crease indicates strong social ties). Feels tied in with nervous laughter as well.
Eye openness
Seriously, though. As I get older, I am starting to think there might actually be a strong correlation between how people look and act. What I don't know for sure is which is first. Some is obviously nature bur nurture is obviously a thing, too.
I think the way people act influences the way their appearance is perceived in very subtle ways. A sketchy liar could have exactly the same bone structure as an honest man, but the sketchy liar will be perceived as less honest due to almost imperceptible differences in body language, the way they hold their facial muscles, etc. The result of these subtle differences can be detected with a vague sensation of "this guy is sketchy, he's probably about to lie to me."
Also I think there is an element of truth to the old wive's tail of "your face is going to get stuck like that". People who frequently have malicious facial expressions in private will find themselves having malicious facial expressions when they don't mean to, when interacting with the people they intend to deceive. Maybe out of pure habit, or maybe because those muscles are just getting more exercise. Somebody who often has a lopsided smirk will develop muscles on one side of their face more than the other, and eventually they can't help but to smirk by default.
I've heard wearing eyeglasses is correlated to intelligence (though I assume weakly).
Domestication syndrome seems to suggest a link. [1]
A largely related example of this is smell [1]. I'm not referencing that particular study so much as the million other studies it also references and mentions early on. Our conscious appreciation of smell doesn't really reach much greater depth than "eww" or "aww", but there's a dramatically larger amount of subconscious processing that we do to come to that conclusion. For one fun example, men subconsciously rate the perceived attractiveness of a woman, based on a blind shirt sniff test, significantly higher when she is ovulating. Again, it's evolution baby. [2]
As a random thought, this also goes some way to explaining the uncanny valley. When the pieces don't fit together into a coherent whole, the brain simply rejects the lot of it.
[1] - https://cognitiveresearchjournal.springeropen.com/articles/1...
The cool tech demos from Nvidia and other which do gaze correction unfortunately didn't make it to Zoom or Teams.
That, along with taking punches to the stomach (We weren't very strong yet, so no worries about us actually injuring each other), just to get "used to getting hit", among other things... these kinds of training helps remove the mental blocks when you actually start to spar.
I'd say that eye-contact is just one of those things you need to train for. I know I did, it helped me a lot inside of a sparring match to help me focus on the opponent rather than feeling awkward (they're looking at me kinda thing).
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If you haven't had martial arts practice, then you could just practice eye-contact with your friends instead.
But for why and what if I'm not into martial arts? Just for social norms and studies that say only then I am really engaged and pay attention, which is definitely not true for me?
You’re not in charge, leave people’s clothing and accessory choices alone.
This seems… not right.
I’m guessing your martial arts teacher was not traditionally trained, but I could be wrong.
In pretty much every sport that I have played in which I engage in some way with my opponents, it’s pretty much always best to focus on the hips, since all major/significant motion starts there.
Didn't work well because I'd feel somewhat hypnotized by the eye contact and could never react in time to block strikes.
The blocking method was ridiculous as well but that's a separate point. Looking back I think a high percentage of that karate training was counter productive or just useless.
Though Eagles style leverages that opponent can't hide their lying eyes.
I dunno. Its where I learned to look people in the eyes, honest.
Oh, I totally believe you.
It’s the teacher I question.
Regardless, I’m glad you were able to take away at least one positive from your instruction.
Not a martial artist, but I'm sure it starts with the intention. Whether that intention can be intuited from the glance I don't know, but wouldn't surprise me.
In MMA fights / sparring, I’ve found touch is the biggest thing to understand intent. A hand on the shoulder can feel where the opponent is moving. Like a race car driver who feels the slide through their butt and corrects the slide before their eyes are telling them they’re sliding.
The two most populated countries in the world for example don’t encourage eye contact, and when you account for the large number of countries in Asia that similarly don’t, the statistical norm is to avoid eye contact.
Apple's Facetime does this by default. It actually works quite well – none of my friends or family have ever noticed it. https://mashable.com/article/fake-eye-contact-on-facetime
A prior discussion on the topic:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33003356
As I mentioned there, personally, once I switched to WFH once the pandemic started, this was a total non-issue for me. I even switched teams and had all brand new coworkers. They never saw me and I never saw them. Everyone's totally fine with it.
I mean, for many of us, we've often had to have meetings/calls with people in another geo anyway. People talk on the phone all the time and I've yet to hear someone say they didn't feel engaged talking to someone on the phone because they couldn't make eye contact. People fall in love that way all the time.
I mean, is it more comfortable to concentrate with eye contact when you're listening to the other person? In other words when not trying to concentrate on forming a response to a question.
I appreciate this won't work in every situation. But I personally find it easier to make eye contact when I'm listening to a friend tell me about their weekend or something.
I do notice that I look at the speaker in a zoom call, even when I have my own video off. I also notice in big calls where many people have their cameras off, it's common that a questioner or commenter will enable the camera before speaking, and then disable it again when their turn is over.
(I searched for "culture" and "language" before posting)
From time to time I observe where other meeting participants look at and I feel like this is very, very common (you can tell by the specific corner a person is looking at in some of these applications)
I know it’s a me problem, just my experience tho lol.
I do plenty of staring at mouths (subconciously), and eye contact has always been a different thing than eyes-watching-lips, especially one-on-one. I'm not sure how it is for the normal-hearing, but prolonged eye contact has never been something I've done much of, my eyes usually regularly drop to the lips (or for those who I can hear really well, I won't be looking at their faces at all ;) )
When following in a group setting, I do watch eyes, but have that strong response of looking away if the speaker happens to make eye contact. And yeah, participating/interjecting in conversations is a weakness.
The whole masking thing though... has been new and rough. If I have to converse 1-on-1 with the other wearing masks, there's no lips to watch, but the eyes are still there! I haven't dug into it too much (spooky? eyes are just distracting non-lipreading motions?), but my brain does massively better at figuring out what is said if I look to the side (typically at the floor/wall). Whether or not I have any autism spectrum traits or not, I'm sure a higher percent of people wonder about such now, than they did a few years ago.
Masks + group of friends: I pretty much auto give up and idle on my phone; the culture of "don't question others about wearing masks" is too strong to feel socially comfortable with asking for masks to be removed. That's definitely excuse-making on my part, but my friends also are pretty good about removing masks when we're seated for dinner, etc. so I haven't been forced to ask for mask removal anyways...
And agreed, masks have shown (what has been said plenty in the past), there's still a ton of readable emotion just around the eyes. Distracting, though!
Relating to the growing into needing/wearing them: I've worn mine since age 3 (and gone from analog to digital, with some tradeoffs of each), they're a constant, but I also have suspicions of my listening comprehension getting worse-over-time. But it could also just as well be increasing self-reflection/awareness + new experiences. (Just this month, mid 30s, first time visiting Germany, after 6ish years of German classes in middle/high school + college; confronted some real hearing limitations trying to listen to natives!)
Same.
I’ve done this since I was a child.
A side benefit is that I have become half way decent at reading lips.
I learned at some point (teens?) to look at my conversation partner’s eyes in certain situations, but it’s not my default.
Even today, this is still pretty common at cashiers and checkouts in Canada, for example.
Many of these barriers were put up rapidly without much thought, and are completely improvised. They aren't like the purpose-build security shields that still have holes, vents, or microphones/speakers to allow at least some verbal communication to take place.
The thick, rigid plastic barriers are the worst offenders, by far, although even flexible plastic sheets can definitely disrupt communication, too.
Different individuals submit to varying degrees, and in different ways.
Some people become very quiet and withdrawn, which can lead to the problems you describe when they try to communicate verbally while masked.
Others feel intense paranoia, and desperately seek out authority figures to latch onto.
Yet others realize that they're submitting, and it makes them feel weak and powerless. These are the individuals who often react aggressively when encountering somebody who isn't submitting like they are.
It's quite a fascinating subject.
Like you just described, somebody else wearing a mask can impose a significant accessibility burden, even for people who may not necessarily have hearing difficulties, for example.
Encouraging, or even forcing in many places, people to wear masks was truly an accessibility tragedy. It's made even worse by the fact that widespread everyday masking isn't even effective. A lot of people were forced to endure a lot of unnecessary and unjustifiable suffering.
Whereas maybe we once used to (passively or actively) make important judgement calls about a persons broader character based on certain physical attributes such as the uniqueness of their face, our wisdom says it just doesn't matter in quite the way we maybe once thought. One of the biggest lessons I learned early on when starting in the tech industry is absolutely never assume anything about anyone based on appearance. We've all fallen for that before!
This is industry dependent because for example, if we're talking about the fashion industry then things are different. I digress...
Regarding the body language and signaling by extension of appearance in American culture it can be used as an measure of certain aspects of someone's personality - not necessarily bad in the lack-of-eye-contact scenario, but we know it's a lot harder for someone to maintain the impression of engagement throughout inattentive interactions. Eye to eye is engaging, anything else is less.
However, since it's about establishing trust and respect when it comes to a new business relationship, at least in America, there's a sense of 'can I trust this person', that's rooted in fear. So if we're talking about something important presumably with potentially painful financial or reputational ramifications - then you tell me if it matters that this person is unwilling, or unable to look into your eyes? Does the inability to match ones gaze lead itself to more or less inherent trustworthiness?
I’ve definitely seen people disadvantaged by being unwilling or unable to look others in the eyes while having a conversation. But I’m not sure we should go as far as discouraging it because some people feel aggressed by being looked at.
At the same time we can all endeavour to be more understanding that people not being able to make eye contact doesn’t necessarily mean much.
Except as has been pointed out several times in this thread, the two most populous countries in the world consider it rude, which means your opinion is probably a minority opinion worldwide and not really so ingrained.
Could the sales type extroverts stop setting standards for everyone please?
I never bother with eye contact. Whats important is what they’re saying.
This study mentions but provides no data or analysis for how their study is impacted by or was affected by the differences between nuerotypical and autistic samples. Which is a shame because as an autistic person who doesn’t like eye contact, I think those findings would have been much more insightful and potentially groundbreaking. My hope is the authors have plans to look closer at that.
This study asserts that eye contact is required for good social engagement and communication. What I am challenging is that that finding is probably only true in Nuerotypical samples and is probably not present in autistic people.
As a neurotypical person, this is actually pretty interesting to me as well. I live in the US and here we are always taught to make eye contact when speaking to someone, as it shows as sign that you are "engaged" with that person. It's something so ingrained in you from a young age here that you start to think that this is how all humans should communicate.
Neurodivergent people just tend to ignore those social constructs, makes me wonder if we as neurotypical people play all these social games and a neurodivergent person just looks at all that as window dressing that isn't required.
This seems like a hypothesis that we could test. For instance, by rationally explaining the practical utility of eye contact, to detect earnestness or deception. Then ask them to attempt this, and see if they can bring themselves to even try. My guess is most neurodivergents who avoid eye contact will find that eye contact remains too uncomfortable to even attempt it. This would show that their eye contact avoidance is not merely a matter of them not seeing any utility in a pointless social game.
I can only speak for my own view, which is that I find making eye contact uncomfortable, and I find that when I do make eye contact it seems like I must be “doing it wrong” because it seems to make others uncomfortable too. Granted I may be reading others’ reactions wrong, the possibility of which contributes to my own discomfort!
Perhaps interesting is that I do have a mild form of Tourette's syndrome. Eye contact for me very quickly becomes "itchy" and there is a lot of focus required to ignore that feeling for a lengthy conversation.
"2 plus 2 equals 4"
"... in base 10, with arabic numerals."
or... it's already the default baseline that everything ever written about any chaotic system from humans to frogs to cells to the weather, is already understood to only ever be expressable in any other terms than percentages, averages, generalizations. All facts or observations are already only some percentage. especially for humans, especially for behavior, especially for behavior in humans. It's frankly ridiculous to mention, like any other truism.
You could add a ridiculous qualifier on practically every other word in any statement on any subject, and that doesn't make them go from false to true, it makes them go from useful to useless.
In case there was any doubt on that last point, consider that each of those lower lifespan by about 30 years, have ~15X higher suicide rates, and are 1:2 are not able to work full time.
Insults are in the eye of the beholder. For a person with a disorder marked by issues with eye contact and understanding social nuances, imagining insults that aren’t there IS the disability’s effect.
If you comment on how much a black person enjoys watermelon and you do so objectively without malice, it’s still fair for that to be considered a big insult. Why? Because it has been used as a derogatory stereotype for many years.
If you want to understand the perspective of neurodivergents, look up the terms “allistic” and “ableism”.
If someone does not like eye contact, that is still an example of attention.
Stirring up a bad situation is not blameless behavior. It's the favorite realm of children, narcissists and saboteurs.
There are way, way more people who are alike in this way than are blind or deaf. Because it's not visible it's a 'safe' form of discrimination.
Or stated another way if you would feel squeamish about playing Russian Roulette then you’re making the same bet if you make judgments about someone you’re not sure is neurodivergent.
If we play this game at the margins every human in the US is female and there’s some exceptions.
Things there’s fewer of than neurodivergent people.
- people who are left handed
- the number of black americans
- people with blue eyes
- redheads
- people who live in California
A neurodivergant having a hard time processing something, or not liking it, is never the less devoting attention to it.
And surely there are some percentage who actually are oblivious to it rather than merely handling it poorly. But they are not 1 in 6.
But swiss cheese arguments to support percieving things as attacks are both quite typical indeed.
That said I've personally almost never made eye contact in 42 years of life, but I do look at mouths which nobody has ever noticed isn't eye contact, and I'm sure serves the same purpose. If all you ever do is look away, it would be interesting to hear if you think there are other things that might serve the same "signal shared attention" functionality for you.
I'll also note that autism isn't the only way to be atypical, and sure wouldn't be surprised if eye contact signals shared attention just as much in ADHD folks as in neurotypical folks (but would be very interested in finding out if that's true or not).
As pointed out in another thread, the population of cultures in the world where not making eye contact is the social norm likely exceeds that where it is, so no - not neurotypical population.
If I am saying hello to someone on the street, and in more "social" and simple conversations, I will probably look at their eyes more.
In person I tend to look into people's eyes for mostly the whole conversation (easily 95% of the time) when I'm either listening or talking minus natural breaks to react to a noise or event that warrants looking away. I've had really long chats like this where I never got a hint someone was weirded out.
Honestly I couldn't even imagine talking with someone without looking at them. In my mind that would be one of the rudest things you could do, especially if they're the one talking. I also wonder if this comes down to how you feel about yourself. I think when you're looking at someone's eyes you know what they're looking at it. For me, knowing where they're looking makes me more relaxed.
I'm in the US and don't recall ever being brought up a certain way, it just "feels" right to do the above.
Ignorance is bliss I guess? I prefer to know. Usually I don't call people out, but I still prefer to know.