Look away to listen

the interplay of emotional context and eye contact in video conversations

verfasst von: 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.
Organisationseinheit(en): Institut für Psychologie
Externe Organisation(en): Max-Planck-Institut für Kognitions- und Neurowissenschaften
Typ: Artikel
Journal: Visual cognition
Band: 29
Seiten: 277-287
Anzahl der Seiten: 11
ISSN: 1350-6285
Publikationsdatum: 29.03.2021
Publikationsstatus: Veröffentlicht
Peer-reviewed: Ja
ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete: Experimentelle und kognitive Psychologie, Geisteswissenschaftliche Fächer (sonstige), Kognitive Neurowissenschaft
Elektronische Version(en): https://doi.org/10.1080/13506285.2021.1908470 (Zugang: Geschlossen)

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",
}