Eye Contact (AQA GCSE Psychology): Revision Note

Eye contact & communication

• Eye contact is a form of non-verbal communication (NVC) which involves how the eyes can communicate a range of meanings. For example:

  • Direction of gaze

  • Duration of gaze

  • The lowering or raising of the eyelids and/or eyebrows

• Eye contact occurs when two people are looking at each other’s eyes at the same time

• It has several functions and purposes

Regulating the flow of conversation

• Humans learn to pick up non-verbal cues around eye contact from the multiple conversations they have during their lifetime

• A non-verbal cue linked to eye contact can be seen when someone wishes to take their turn in the conversation

  • They look away from the other person and when they are about to finish what they are saying they look at the person to whom they are speaking (Kendon, 1967)

• Vertegaal et al. (2001) conducted research using an eye tracker during a four-person conversation:

  • They found that when someone is listening or speaking to individuals there is a high probability that the person looked at is the person listened to or spoken to, therefore, the gaze is a good predictor of conversational attention in groups

Signalling attraction

• Another function of eye contact is to signal attraction:

  • One non-verbal way to tell someone that you are attracted to them is to maintain eye contact with them

  • Finding someone attractive (physically and/or psychologically) means that you are likely to want to look at them for long periods of time

    • Some evolutionary psychologists believe that this is an inbuilt mechanism to aid human survival across the millennia as it builds familiarity with each other which strengthens bonding between a couple

• Conway et al. (2007) showed students pictures of people looking straight at them, or slightly away, and found that the faces showing direct eye contact were rated as more attractive, even when the face featured a negative emotion, such as disgust

  • This suggests eye contact is an evolutionary behaviour that signals attraction to a potential mate

    • People may prefer a direct gaze as it appeals to their vanity (i.e. how important/special they are made to feel)

Expressing emotion

• Another function of eye contact is to express emotion:

  • Eye contact can be a powerful emotional tool, sometimes without someone even realising that their eye contact is being interpreted as hostile/bored/mocking

• A study by Rychlowska et al. (2012) found that participants rated images of people smiling while making eye contact as more emotional than images with no eye contact

  • Thus eye contact reinforces the positive emotional message of a smile

• Adams & Kleck (2005) found that the intensity of emotion was regulated via eye contact

  • Emotions such as joy and anger were found to be more intense when used with direct eye contact

  • Sadness and fear were found to be most intense when used with an averted gaze

    • Thus eye contact can be used to express a range of emotions in different ways

Evaluation of eye contact

Strengths

• Eye contact research helps explain a feature of autism: some autistic people use less eye contact, and since studies show eye contact is important for reading emotion, this shows we should be sensitive to this rather than misjudging people

• Research supports the idea people generally prefer a direct gaze (unless the message is hostile), which could be a survival mechanism

Weaknesses

• Rating scales for attractiveness or emotion intensity are subjective: they rely on personal opinion of what counts as "attractive" or "intense,"

  • These judgements are open to bias and interpretation meaning that studies using rating scales may not produce objective evidence, threatening their validity

• Some studies involve artificial tasks: in Kendon's study, participants were asked to get to know a stranger as part of the experiment, which may not reflect how people usually meet in real life

  • This could have affected how much eye contact participants showed, meaning the results may be unrealistic and lack validty