Eye Contact Evokes Blushing Independently of Negative Affect

Abstract

To determine whether eye contact elicits blushing due to anxiety, forehead blood flow was measured during a stressful quiz and self-disclosure. The investigator maintained eye contact with 19 participants whereas, in another 40 cases, the investigator and/or participant wore sunglasses or the investigator left the room (the control group). Anxiety, embarrassment and forehead blood flow increased in both groups during the quiz, consistent with anxiety-evoked blushing. However, during self-disclosure, increases in forehead blood flow were greater in the eye contact than control group despite reductions in embarrassment and anxiety. These findings suggest that eye contact augments blushing over and above any influence of anxiety or general scrutiny during self-disclosure.

Facial expressions contribute more than body movements to conversational outcomes in avatar-mediated virtual environments

“…While there are a handful studies that lend insight into the independent and joint contributions of various nonverbal channels during FtF interactions, the majority of these studies were either conducted with static images 12 , 13 or posed expressions 14 – 16 , rather than FtF interactions. In addition, the limited number of studies that did study the impact of different nonverbal cues in FtF dyadic contexts asked participants to wear sunglasses 17 , 18 or covered parts of their bodies 19 , 20 , which inevitably alters the appearance of the target individual and reduces both the ecological validity and generalizability of results. By using identical avatars across conditions and only allowing the nonverbal information to differ, the present study offers an ideal balance between experimental control and ecological validity 3 .…”

Reactivity of observers’ facial skin blood flow depending on others’ facial expressions and blushing

“…Previous studies used parametric tests, such as analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Pearson's correlation test, to analyse the SkBF and heart rate (Drummond and Su, 2012;Drummond and Bailey, 2013;…”

“…Previous studies used parametric tests, such as analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Pearson’s correlation test, to analyse the SkBF and heart rate ( Drummond and Su, 2012 ; Drummond and Bailey, 2013 ; Kashima et al, 2013 ). We used two-way repeated measures ANOVA to examine the effect of blushing and facial expressions on physiological and subjective indices.…”

“…However, recent studies have introduced facial skin blood flow (SkBF) as a new emotion-related autonomic index. Facial SkBF increases when experiencing emotions such as anger ( Drummond, 1999 ; Drummond and Quah, 2001 ), joy ( Drummond, 1994 ), anxiety ( Hirota et al, 2017 ; Brummelman et al, 2018 ; Nikolić et al, 2018 ), and embarrassment ( Drummond et al, 2003 , 2007 ; Drummond and Bailey, 2013 ). Matsukawa et al (2018) showed that the facial SkBF decreases when watching a comedy, a positively charged emotional stimulus.…”

Blushing and social anxiety: A meta‐analysis.

“…The hypothesis of biased appraisal of interoceptive information which leads to overestimation of physiological change in socially anxious people is supported by a number of studies that have found that socially anxious individuals who are informed that their physiological anxiety level (e.g., heart rate) is increasing during a social situation (regardless of the veracity of this information) report greater subjective anxiety than if they are told their symptoms are diminishing (Wells & Papageorgiou, 2001). Studies with false feedback of blushing confirmed that false positive feedback increased embarrassment and subjective feelings of blushing, whereas physiological blushing was less affected by the false feedback (Dijk et al, 2009;Drummond et al, 2003). These results support the idea that the perception or interpretation of physiological functioning, rather than actual physiological functioning, is included in the creation of internal representations of socially anxious individuals.…”