Your attention makes me smile: Direct gaze elicits affiliative facial expressions

Abstract

Facial electromyographic responses and skin conductance responses were measured to investigate whether, in a neutral laboratory environment, another individual's direct gaze elicits a positive or negative affective reaction in the observer. The results showed that greater zygomatic responses associated with positive affect were elicited by seeing another person with direct as compared to averted gaze. The zygomatic responses were greater in response to another person's direct gaze both when the participant's own gaze was directed towards the other and when the participant was not looking directly towards the other. Compatible with the zygomatic responses, the corrugator activity (associated with negative affect) was decreased below baseline more in response to another person's direct than averted gaze. Replicating previous research, the skin conductance responses were greater to another person's direct than averted gaze. The results provide evidence that, in a neutral context, another individual's direct gaze is an affiliative, positive signal.

Affective Eye Contact: An Integrative Review

“…However, as Hietanen et al (2018) stressed in their discussion, we cannot know for sure about the extent to which the observed facial reactions reflect automatic affective reactions or highly automatized affiliative facial responses triggered by communicative motivations during social interaction.…”

“…Hietanen et al (2018) argued that the reason for the lack of a mere gaze direction effect could be that, in these previous studies, the stimuli were images of human faces or animated virtual characters. A viewer knows that an image of a face presented on a computer monitor does not look back.…”

“…This argument was supported by their previous experiments that showed that, while psychophysiological responses (electroencephalographic and autonomic responses) to direct versus averted gaze had been observed to differ when a live individual was presented as a stimulus, there was no effect of gaze direction on responses to pictures of the same individual (Hietanen et al, 2008; Pönkänen et al, 2011a,b). Therefore, Hietanen et al (2018) investigated the effect of another individual’s gaze direction on participants’ facial responses by showing a live individual with a neutral expression as a stimulus. In their study, not only did the model individuals vary their gaze direction, but the participants were also allowed to look either directly at the model individual or slightly away from him or her, at a pre-determined fixation spot.…”

“…Possibility for interaction has also been suggested to play a role in triggering the autonomic affective responses to eye contact (Myllyneva and Hietanen, 2016). In a recent experiment, as described in the previous section, Hietanen et al (2018) measured participants’ facial EMG responses when they were allowed to look either directly at the model individual or slightly away from him or her. As described above, the zygomatic response to the model individual’s direct gaze was greater when participants were looking at the model as compared to when their gaze was slightly averted.…”

Does the Experience of Parasocial Interaction Enhance Persuasiveness of Video Public Service Messages?

“…Eye gazing, in particular, is seen as a crucial element for creating a feeling of connection between individuals in face-to-face interactions (Sally, 2000) and, by extension, between audience member and media performer (Hartmann & Goldhoorn, 2011). The sense of mutual gaze also establishes social interaction (Heitanen et al, 2018;Senju & Johnson, 2009) and fosters intimacy and liking (for a review, see Kleinke, 1986)-and people generally prefer to say yes to requestors they know and like (Cialdini, 2009(Cialdini, , 2016. Finally, persuasion theorists have long recognized attention and relevance as agents of influence and compliance gaining (e.g., Chaiken, 1980;Petty & Cacioppo, 1986), and indeed, viewers who sense being in a social interaction with the media persona pay closer attention and judge the message to be more personally relevant to them (Heitanen et al, 2018;Myllyneva & Hietanen, 2015).…”