Cultural Display Rules Drive Eye Gaze During Thinking

Abstract

The authors measured the eye gaze displays of Canadian, Trinidadian, and Japanese participants as they answered questions for which they either knew, or had to derive, the answers. When they knew the answers, Trinidadians maintained the most eye contact, whereas Japanese maintained the least. When thinking about the answers to questions, Canadians and Trinidadians looked up, whereas Japanese looked down. Thus, for humans, gaze displays while thinking are at least in part culturally determined.Keywords eye gaze; communication; cross-cultural; gaze display; thinking Eye gaze displays play an important role in social interaction. People use others' eye movements to regulate conversation (e.g., turn-taking), to make character judgments (e.g., honesty, shyness), and to gain insight into their internal mental processes (e.g., thinking). Extensive research has established that individuals engaged in thinking tend to avert eye gaze. To date, researchers generally agree that eye gaze aversion during thinking is triggered by endogenous brain activities.The present study examined an alternative hypothesis that culture may also play a role in eye gaze display during thinking. This hypothesis is derived from the existing cross-cultural literature on eye gaze display. Societies have various eye-related norms regarding where and for how long one should look at a person during social interaction (Knapp & Hall, 2002).Correspondence to: ANJANIE McCARTHY.Correspondence should be addressed to Anjanie McCarthy; e-mail: amccarthy@oise.utoronto.ca.. Anjanie McCarthy, PhD, is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Child Study, University of Toronto. She studies nonverbal behaviors in adults and children during interpersonal interaction. Her current research interests include the development of eye gaze displays in different social contexts and sociocultural and cognitive factors that affect eye gaze displays and other nonverbal behaviors. Kang Lee, PhD, is a professor and the director of the Institute of Child Study, University of Toronto. He studies the development of social cognition and social behavior. His current research interests include children's moral understanding of lying, their actual lying behavior, and the sociocultural, cognitive, and neurophysiological factors that influence the development of lying. Shoji Itakura, PhD, is an associate professor in the Department of Psychology, Kyoto University. His research focuses on human and primate development. His current research interests include early social cognition, theory of mind, development of lying, and android and robotic sciences. Darwin W. Muir, PhD, is a professor emeritus, Department of Psychology, Queen's University. He studies infant social cognition and behavior. His current research interests include infant auditory localization, fetal-infant sensitivity to vibroacoustic stimulation, and infant affect and attentional responses to changes in adult vocal and facial expressions of emotions during social interactions. NIH Public Access

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