Eye contact and arousal: The effects of stimulus duration

Learning under your gaze: the mediating role of affective arousal between perceived direct gaze and memory performance

“…Even so, as far as we know, there is no empirical evidence that the increasing amount of eye contact would linearly enhance arousal. On the contrary, in Helminen et al (2011) study, there were no differences in the magnitude of phasic skin conductance responses as a function of eye contact duration (2 vs. 5 s). Apparently, however, in future studies, it is important to control more precisely the amount of eye contact.…”

“…As far as we know, the only previous study showing that females might not respond to direct gaze as strongly as males while performing a memory task was the study by Otteson and Otteson (1980) with primary school children. In previous studies investigating the effect of direct gaze on arousal, both females and males have been found to respond to direct gaze with enhanced arousal responses (Nichols & Champness, 1971;Helminen et al, 2011;Hietanen et al, 2008;Myllyneva & Hietanen, 2015;Pönkänen et al, 2011). Thus, we are cautious in drawing any conclusions about this result.…”

“…The studies investigating the effect of direct gaze on skin conductance measures of arousal have most often quantified the response as an amplitude or magnitude of phasic skin conductance responses following the onset of the stimulus (e.g., Hietanen et al, 2008;Helminen et al, 2011;Myllyneva & Hietanen, 2015;Conty et al, 2010; See also Boucsein, 2012, for description of the methodology). This approach was not applicable in the present study, as the stimulus was a one-minute-long storytelling period that included seeing the storyteller and memorizing the contents of the spoken story.…”

“…Several studies have shown that seeing another individual's direct eye gaze, compared with averted, results in enhanced arousal responses (Nichols & Champness, 1971;Kleinke & Pohlen, 1971;Gale, Lucas, Nissim, & Harpham, 1972;Gale, Spratt, Chapman, & Smallbone, 1975;Helminen, Kaasinen, & Hietanen, 2011). Arousal has been associated to performance already in the early twentieth century by the classic Yerkes-Dodson law proposing an inverted U-shape relationship between arousal and performance (see e.g., Eysenck, 1982).…”

Eye contact reveals a relationship between Neuroticism and anterior EEG asymmetry

“…Behavioral gaze avoidance has, for instance, been linked to social anxiety (Schneier et al, 2011;Schulze et al, 2013), high self-reported Neuroticism (Campbell and Rushton, 1978), and low self-esteem (Vandromme et al, 2011). While facing a person gazing at them, people with higher Neuroticism scores have also been shown to report stronger subjective avoidance motivation (Helminen et al, 2011). Taken together, these findings suggest that looking at another person with direct gaze should reveal Neuroticism-related differences in anterior EEG asymmetry.…”