Paper of the week: Making eye contact in social situations increases arousal

Helminen, T. M., Kaasinen, S. M., & Hietanen, J. K. (2011). Eye contact and arousal: The effects of stimulus duration. Biological Psychology, 88(1), 124-130

Eye contact in different social situations varies between people. Part of the reason for this behaviour relates to the way that eye contact increases prefrontal brain activity and activates the sympathetic nervous system. Different personality traits also influence eye contact.

The present study addressed whether direct eye contact would be judged as being any less approachable to an averted gaze, and whether the time in which subjects felt it natural to look at either gaze type would be any different. Thirty-three university students participated in the study. Live facial stimuli were displayed to seated subjects by way of a shutter frame on a table. In the first part of the experiment, subjects moved a lever forward or backward to register whether each different gaze type was either approachable or avoidable. In the second part of the experiment, the subjects controlled the frame shutter directly, while the duration of facial stimuli was recorded. To measure sympathetic activity, skin conductance (GSR) was recorded using dermal electrodes and a PowerLab.

Results demonstrated that direct gaze increased skin conductance and was associated with lower eye contact in the subjects, compared to when the facial stimuli exhibited an averted gaze. A follow-up personality questionnaire revealed that participants who had evaluated a direct gaze as approachable were more emotionally stable compared to those who evaluated a direct gaze as avoidable.

These results help shed light on the nature of human eye contact and may have practical value in a range of contexts, such as management-employee productivity.

25 November 2011