Look away to listen

the interplay of emotional context and eye contact in video conversations

authored by: Christina Breil, Anne Böckler
Abstract: Eye gaze is a fundamental element of social interaction. We investigated the role of gaze direction during video conversations between friends, colleagues or strangers. Participants watched short video cuts of a target person engaging in direct gaze, averted gaze or a mixture of both (gaze direction) while listening to another, invisible, person recounting a neutral or negative autobiographical episode (emotional context). Subsequently, participants rated the target person on empathy, perspective taking and trustworthiness and indicated how close they perceived the relationship between conversation partners. We found that participants rated the target person and the interaction less favourable when the target’s gaze was averted. Critically, these effects of gaze direction were modulated by emotional context: When narrations were negative, (partly) averted gaze had a less negative impact on participants evaluations. Hence, gaze direction is not perceived and interpreted in isolation, but in context.
Organisation(s): Institute of Psychology
External Organisation(s): Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Science (MPI CBS)
Type: Article
Journal: Visual cognition
Volume: 29
Pages: 277-287
No. of pages: 11
ISSN: 1350-6285
Publication date: 29.03.2021
Publication status: Published
Peer reviewed: Yes
ASJC Scopus subject areas: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous), Cognitive Neuroscience
Electronic version(s): https://doi.org/10.1080/13506285.2021.1908470 (Access: Closed)

BibTeX

@article{ecb78d16176c43da92425a0b58474e51,
title = "Look away to listen: the interplay of emotional context and eye contact in video conversations",
abstract = "Eye gaze is a fundamental element of social interaction. We investigated the role of gaze direction during video conversations between friends, colleagues or strangers. Participants watched short video cuts of a target person engaging in direct gaze, averted gaze or a mixture of both (gaze direction) while listening to another, invisible, person recounting a neutral or negative autobiographical episode (emotional context). Subsequently, participants rated the target person on empathy, perspective taking and trustworthiness and indicated how close they perceived the relationship between conversation partners. We found that participants rated the target person and the interaction less favourable when the target{\textquoteright}s gaze was averted. Critically, these effects of gaze direction were modulated by emotional context: When narrations were negative, (partly) averted gaze had a less negative impact on participants evaluations. Hence, gaze direction is not perceived and interpreted in isolation, but in context.",
keywords = "communication, direct gaze, empathy, gaze behaviour, Social interaction, video conversations",
author = "Christina Breil and Anne B{\"o}ckler",
note = "Funding Information: This work was supported by the German Research Foundation under Grant number BO 4962/1-1. We thank two anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback that helped us to strengthen our manuscript. ",
year = "2021",
month = mar,
day = "29",
doi = "10.1080/13506285.2021.1908470",
language = "English",
volume = "29",
pages = "277--287",
journal = "Visual cognition",
issn = "1350-6285",
publisher = "Taylor and Francis Ltd.",
number = "5",
}