Contact is in the eye of the beholder: the eye contact illusion

Authors

Shane L. Rogers, Edith Cowan UniversityFollow
Oliver Guidetti, Edith Cowan UniversityFollow
Craig P. Speelman, Edith Cowan UniversityFollow
Melissa Longmuir, Edith Cowan UniversityFollow

Document Type

Journal Article

Publication Title

Perception

Publisher

Sage Publications Ltd

School

School of Arts and Humanities

RAS ID

28904

Comments

Rogers, S. L., Guidetti, O., Speelman, C. P., Longmuir, M., & Phillips, R. (2019). Contact is in the eye of the beholder: The eye contact illusion. Perception, 48(3), 248-252. Available here.

Abstract

In a simple experiment, we demonstrate that you don’t need to mindfully look at the eyes of your audience to be perceived as making eye contact during face-to-face conversation. Simply gazing somewhere around the face/head area will suffice. Or to borrow a term from Mareschal and colleagues, direct gaze will suffice. For those readers who experience anxiety when gazing specifically at another person’s eyes, or when being gazed at, we expect this is welcome news. © The Author(s) 2019.

DOI

10.1177/0301006619827486

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