I Only Have Eyes For You: The Effects of Exchanging Eye Contact
The philosopher, Martin Buber (1878-1965), likened the immediate and intimate contact between two people as a meeting on a narrow ridge. The image is a good one. The encounter makes one feel as though they are on a higher plane while, at the same time, imbuing it with a sense of danger. One feels experientially in a smaller, more private space and one from which it is difficult to escape. The feelings articulated in Buber’s image were made concrete for me several times in my youth when participating in psychotherapy growth groups. Back then they were sometimes called “Be With Exercises” or making “Contact” with others. These encounters as I recall were somewhat scary and exciting—both thrilling and threatening at the same time–and always resulted in some significant insights.
What is the neurophilosophy behind gaze exchange? First, social gaze is a whole-body experience in that gaze is not just the only cue drawing the focus of another person. The whole head and its orientation are important factors. The whole face is important. As opposed to monkeys and apes who have flatter faces, humans have prominent cheekbones, large noses and eyebrows. These frame the eyes and so make them a more figural stimulus against the background of the face. Posture is also influential, but of less power than the head and eyes (Emery, 2000).
Facial recognition also plays a very key role in all of this as well. A meta-analysis of neuroscientific studies of facial recognition examined 141 studies with a total of 3,138 participants. It found that the amygdala was always engaged in tandem with a set of brain networks. The left-hemisphere appears to dominate in facial processing with the amygdala and anterior insula having central roles. The ventral medial pre-frontal cortex is also active which indicates that looking at faces depends on a flexible yet asymmetrical neural processing system (Xu et al., 2021).
Related to this is the system for recognizing emotions in faces. This brain system varies in its activities depending on the type of stimuli it is processing, the type of sensory information it is receiving, and the facial features involved (Calder & Young, 2005). The brain areas active in the processing facial emotions are the fusiform face area (FFA) and middle temporal gyrus. These areas are connected to the amygdala, medial prefrontal cortex, orbitofrontal cortex, inferior temporal cortex, and extrastriate occipital cortex (Sabatinelli et al., 2011).
The Foundation for Human Interpersonal Relations
Direct gaze serves a variety of function in human life. It is the basis for social communication and is impaired in neuropsychological conditions such as schizophrenia and autism. Five types of effects have been catalogued: (1) attention capture, (2) enhancement of self-awareness, (3) memory enhancement, (4) support of prosocial behaviors, and (5) positive evaluations of others (Conty, George, & Hietanen, J. (2016).
- Attention capture
The eyes are the first and most explored part of the face during social interactions. As there is a facial recognition area in the occipital cortex so too some researchers argue for an eye recognition center in the brain. Much evidence has been found for the notion of attention capture which is the usually unconscious focusing on the eyes of another. Direct gaze seems to lock attention onto the face for 500–900 milliseconds after onset of direct gaze exposure.
- Enhancement of self-awareness
We become more self-conscious when we realize another person is looking at us. Interestingly, being looked at heightens not only awareness of the public self—awareness of how one’s is being perceived by others in public (Pönkänen, Peltola, & Hietanen, 2011) but also of the body-self as well (Baltazar et al., 2014).
- Enhancement of memory
Direct gaze allows babies from four to eight months old to distinguish familiar faces from new ones. Attention capture is thought to increase attention intensity to faces while increasing memory capacity for verbal information in both children and adults.
- Enhancement of prosocial behaviors
Direct eye contact is related to approach/avoidance behaviors. EEG studies show that direct gaze activates the left hemisphere which is responsible for approaching and engaging with things while averted gaze causes right hemispheric activation and avoidance tendencies. Test subjects being watched by others tended to engage in more prosocial behaviors than when not being observed.
- Positive evaluations of others
Numerous studies in social psychology show that people with good eye contact are judged as being more likable, credible, and self-confident.
“Watching Eyes:” A New Model of Eye Contact
The latest model explaining the power of direct gaze is based on its self-referential power meaning it enhances the experience of one’s own person. Self-referencing has been linked to all of the five main characteristics of direct gaze just given above. Further, direct gaze activates brain areas known to be related to self-referencing: the anterior cingulate cortex and the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex. The Watching Eyes model proposes a two-step process in which the awareness of another’s eyes first captures the attention and then increases the experience of self-existence.
Closing Thoughts
Gazing at by another and returning that gaze—whether from a distance or through direct eye contact within one’s personal body space—is a mammoth neurological feat which yields a powerful experience with many profound effects upon our experience of self. The brain must first recognize that what the eyes are looking at is a face, then it has to discern its features and emotional implications, and then focuses into the most expressive portion of the whole: the eyes.
Because eye gaze is such a powerful and evocative emotional experience, there are some potentially therapeutic applications using direct eye contact. Working with the eye gaze behavior and experiences of the socially-withdrawn, the autistic, the anxious, and other psychopathologies offers many possibilities. It certainly speaks to the power of the “be here now” types of personal encounter exercises in which I was first schooled.
In any event, eye gaze is an embodied event and/or relationship and bears further investigation.
Paul Shane, Ph.D., LMT
Director, Academic Content
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References
Baltazar, M., Hazem, N. Vilarem, E., Beaucousin, V., Picq, J., & Conty, L. (2014). Eye contact elicits bodily self-awareness in human adults. Cognition 133(1), p. 120-127.
Calder, A. & Young, A (2005). Understanding the recognition of facial identity and facial expression. National Review of Neuroscience 6(8), p. 641–651.
Conty, L., George, N., & Hietanen, J. (2016). Watching Eyes effects: When others meet the self. Consciousness and Cognition 45, p. 184-197.
Emery, N. (2000). The eyes have it: The neuroethology, function and evolution of social gaze. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 24, p. 581-604.
Pönkänen, L., Peltola, M., & Hietanen, J. (2011). The observer observed: frontal EEG asymmetry and autonomic responses differentiate between another person’s direct and averted gaze when the face is seen live. International Journal of Psychophysiology 82, p. 180–187.
Sabatinelli, D., Fortune, E., Li, Q., Siddiqui, A., Krafft, C., Oliver, W., Beck, S., & Jeffries, J., (2011). Emotional perception: meta-analyses of face and natural scene processing. Neuroimage 54(3), p. 2524–2533.
Xu, P., Peng, S., Luo, Y., & Gong, G. (2021). Facial expression recognition: A meta-analytic review of theoretical models and neuroimaging evidence. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 127, p. 828-836.