The Significance of Eye Contact

by Matilda Atkins

I wanted to write this article because I started thinking about the social meaning of eye contact and I wanted to find out more about it. This was prompted when I was on a bus recently, and there was a baby looking at me and I looked back at it then started to think at what point should I stop looking at it? There was nothing more interesting to look at on the crowded bus, but I felt awkward and that I was being weird. I started to think why? What was making me feel uncomfortable with this? It’s not as if the baby would know about any social norms that it would be weird to keep eye contact for a long time. Then I looked away and looked back and the baby was still looking at me then I felt weird because I was acting like I was flirting with a baby. This just shows how confusing our relationship with eye contact is as a society, it’s much safer just to look out the window. 

There are studies which show that babies of just two days prefer looking at faces that look back at them and that babies’ brains process eye contact differently from averted gaze. I remember being pushed in a pram as a baby and being upset that nobody would look down and smile at me. I thought everyone around me just looked sad and wouldn’t smile at anyone else. 

Most children recognise the social significance of eye contact, but they either take this too far or the opposite. At the age of three and four, for example, studies show that children often believe that as long as they cover their eyes and prevent eye contact, they can’t be seen. This is seen when they do something wrong and cover their eyes to try to get away from it. To some extent, this is still seen in adults as when we’re embarrassed often the first thing we’ll do is cover our faces or shut our eyes. Unlike adults, who mostly know instinctively to break eye contact to help concentrate on what they’re saying, children will tend to maintain gaze. Children are also more likely to stare at someone who looks different without knowing or thinking that it’s rude.

Children with autism often show a noticeable lack of eye contact and part of the reason is their difficulty understanding the social significance of another person’s gaze, and that they find it difficult to infer other people’s mental state from their eyes. People with social anxiety often find that making eye contact makes them anxious. If people aren’t confident about their appearance or way of acting socially, it makes sense that they would be uncomfortable about people looking directly at them. It could also be that once you have eye contact, you have someone’s full attention so what you say or do next is more important and therefore pressured. 

It is known that eye contact causes increased self-consciousness. We become more aware of what our body is doing, whereas we are usually distracted from that in daily life. Locking eyes creates an awareness of another’s mind and in some ways a connection between two minds. People become conscious of the other person’s agency, something that is often forgotten as we spend our time in our own worlds. Studies show that we are more emotionally aware after we lock eyes with someone, perhaps this is because we are more aware of the importance of the other’s perspective rather than just our own. Therefore, eye contact is significant to how we relate to each other as humans. 

A recent study found that mutual gaze leads to a kind of partial melding of the self and other: we rate strangers with whom we’ve made eye contact as more similar to us, in terms of their personality and appearance. For example, we are more likely to remember faces with which we’ve experienced mutual gaze, and we consider displays of anger and joy to be more intense when shown by a person making eye contact. During eye contact we apparently pay attention at a subconscious level to the behaviour of the other person’s pupils and if they dilate – a sign of attraction and emotional arousal – we judge them to be more trustworthy, whereas if they constrict – a sign of fear or feeling threatened - we judge them to be the opposite. Also, when people look each other in the eyes, it is shown that their pupils mimic each other in shape. 

Apparently, eye contact for longer than 10 minutes in a darkened room can cause dissociation, time slowing down, and psychedelic effects such as deformed facial features. I tried this with my sister today and it was quite weird in that anything you stare at for a long time stops making sense, but we didn’t notice anything that weird. The time did go pretty slowly but since we couldn’t help laughing and Lilah kept on trying to talk to me, we probably didn’t do it properly. Maybe it works better with someone you’re not close to or a stranger.

There are some rules as to what social eye contact means. For example, that a person who breaks eye contact with you by looking down is intimidated or attracted and a person who breaks eye contact by looking to the side is indifferent. If someone is avoiding eye contact it could mean that they’re either attracted and momentarily self-conscious by your presence, or they’re uninterested and avoiding making contact altogether. 

We can read emotion from eyes. It is famously said that eyes are the windows to the soul. Perhaps for this reason, it is also said that ‘the eyes don’t lie’. It is true that many assumptions are made about a person’s honesty through their eyes. If your eyes move right when you say something, it is supposed to be a lie. People also make assumptions about personality depending on the amount of eye contact they have with you. Too little eye contact makes you seen as insincere or shy, more eye contact makes you more engaging and persuasive, however too much eye contact is a characteristic of psychopaths. 

I thought a bit about the meaning of eye contact when I was in India. As foreigners, our group would get a lot of local people staring at us. After a day of this I started playing a game (only when I was in a car) where I would just stare back at anyone looking at me and see how long it would take before they would get uncomfortable and look away. For most people there it was quite a long time. If I did the same thing in England, I’m sure I would get the opposite result, it would be hard to get any eye contact at all. Is that completely to do with the fact that in England I’m not different? In fact, in cities such as London it wouldn’t be different really to see any type of person. It reminded me of playing sweet or sour in the car when I was younger in London, in fact this game probably would tell a lot about cultural norms, but I don’t think it's really received well unless you’re a child. This made me question whether eye contact is universally about difference or do the norms surrounding it change in different cultures.

Has a lack of eye contact got something to do with society as a whole becoming more individualistic and selfish? Is it related to a lack of intimacy and connection between strangers which is reflected in the global fall in birth rates? Is it due to the internet, was there more eye contact before the internet? On public transport especially. Have we become more socially awkward because of the internet? However, these questions are due to so many different factors that I would take ages to find any kind of valid answer. 

Overall, eye contact is an important factor in our relationships with other people, both known and strangers. My research has shown me that eye contact can be used to communicate with other people, in a way it is a language in itself. And like other languages, it is intrinsically linked with culture and is used differently by different people depending on purpose and context.