Pupil dilation as an index of preferred mutual gaze duration

Abstract

Most animals look at each other to signal threat or interest. In humans, this social interaction is usually punctuated with brief periods of mutual eye contact. Deviations from this pattern of gazing behaviour generally make us feel uncomfortable and are a defining characteristic of clinical conditions such as autism or schizophrenia, yet it is unclear what constitutes normal eye contact. Here, we measured, across a wide range of ages, cultures and personality types, the period of direct gaze that feels comfortable and examined whether autonomic factors linked to arousal were indicative of people's preferred amount of eye contact. Surprisingly, we find that preferred period of gaze duration is not dependent on fundamental characteristics such as gender, personality traits or attractiveness. However, we do find that subtle pupillary changes, indicative of physiological arousal, correlate with the amount of eye contact people find comfortable. Specifically, people preferring longer durations of eye contact display faster increases in pupil size when viewing another person than those preferring shorter durations. These results reveal that a person's preferred duration of eye contact is signalled by physiological indices (pupil dilation) beyond volitional control that may play a modulatory role in gaze behaviour.

Face exploration dynamics differentiate men and women

“…In parallel, it has very recently been shown that humans have idiosyncratic scanpaths while exploring faces (Kanan, Bseiso, Ray, Hsiao, & Cottrell, 2015) and that these scanning patterns are highly stable across time, representing a specific behavioral signature (Mehoudar, Arizpe, Baker, & Yovel, 2014). In the latter study, the Citation: Coutrot, A., Binetti, N., Harrison, C., Mareschal, I., & Johnston, A. (2016).…”

Conversational Principles

“…11,12 A British study found that on average 3.3 seconds was the ideal duration of eye contact (subjects were visitors to the London Science Museum). 13 When direct eye contact is undesirable or when breaking eye contact momentarily to avoid staring, facing the person but gazing at their neck, ear, or shoulder will make it clear that they still have your attention. Some people may prefer to stand or sit side-by-side during a discussion or to occupy themselves with a task to avoid extended eye contact.…”

First-person Video Analysis for Evaluating Skill Level in the Humanitude Tender-Care Technique

“…The estimation of facial poses and distances is currently performed frame-by-frame and TempEC considers only 1/3 seconds as the temporal duration. However, it has been reported that the duration of eye contact is about three seconds in typical communication scenes [6] and that a longer duration of mutual gaze is often effective in communicating with a dementia patient [3]. Thus, temporal inference using a longer duration can be expected to be effective in care-skill evaluation as well.…”