Eye Contact May Tell You How Neurotic Someone Is.


We all have experience in social situations where we meet someone who can't look us in the eye, or perhaps, we find it difficult to look someone in the eye.

Folk wisdom says that the inability to meet someone's gaze is a sign of dishonesty.  Is it?  Or is it something else altogether?

According this research out of the University of Tartu in Estonia and the University of Tampere in Finland provides at least a partial answer.  Avoidance of direct eye contact may also be a sign of the person's level of neuroticism.  

Here's the report:
*  *  *  *  *
 
Personality shapes the way
our brains react to eye contact

Creating Characters:
A Writer's Reference
to the Personality Traits
That Bring Fictional
People to Life

by Howard Lauther

Click on image to order
Powell's Books
Eye contact a powerful social signal
Eye contact plays a crucial role when people initiate interaction with other people. If people look each other in the eye, they automatically send a signal that their attention is focused on the other person. If the other person happens to look back, the two will be in eye contact, and a channel for interaction is opened. Eye contact is thus a powerful social signal, which is known to increase our physiological arousal.

Approach motivation / avoidance motivation
Previous research has suggested that eye contact triggers patterns of brain activity associated with approach motivation, whereas seeing another person with his or her gaze averted triggers brain activity associated with avoidance motivation. This indicates that another person's attention is something important and desirable. However, many people find it discomforting and may even experience high levels of anxiety when they are the focus of someone's gaze.

Researchers at the University of Tartu in Estonia and the University of Tampere in Finland set out to study what lies underneath these individual psychological differences.
  • Does personality modulate how a person reacts to eye contact? 
  • Can this difference be measured by brain activity?
"In order to test this hypothesis, we conducted an experiment where the participants' electrical brain activity was recorded while they were looking at another person who was either making eye contact or had her gaze averted to the side. We had assessed the participants' personality with a personality test in advance," Researcher Helen Uusberg explains.

The results showed that personality does indeed modulate the way one's brain reacts to attention from another individual.
  • The eye contact triggered approach-associated brain activity patterns in those participants who scored low on Neuroticism, the personality dimension related to anxiety and self-consciousness. However, 
  • if the participant scored high on this personality dimension, the eye contact triggered more avoidance-associated brain activity patterns. 
    • The high-scoring participants also wanted to look at the other person with a direct gaze for shorter periods of time and experienced more pleasant feelings when they faced a person with an averted gaze.
"Our findings indicate that people do not only feel different when they are the center of attention but that their brain reactions also differ. For some, eye contact tunes the brain into a mode that increases the likelihood of initiating an interaction with other people. For others, the effect of eye contact may decrease this likelihood," Professor Jari Hietanen explains.

Related stories:




Story Source:  Materials provided by Suomen Akatemia (Academy of Finland).  Helen Uusberg, Jüri Allik, Jari K. Hietanen. Eye contact reveals a relationship between Neuroticism and anterior EEG asymmetry. Neuropsychologia, 2015.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Workout supplements: An emerging eating disorder in men?

Image
therewontbeanydoves.wordpress.com When developing a fictional character, you may not think about the character using large amounts of over-the-counter dietary supplements.  Especially a man who uses large amounts of workout supplements. While there has been widespread publicity on the dangers of the non-prescribed use of anabolic steroids, not much is said about legal, over-the-counter supplements.  Are there risks?  And if so, what are they?  There are several things the writer should consider. Supplement use is becoming an eating disorder with many men who use them to prepare for and recover from a workout. There is growing evidence of a link between muscle-building supplements and testicular cancer. There is evidence that over-the counter medications and supplements are the most common causes of drug-induced liver failure (a rare event, but still a risk.)  There is even evidence that, “certain popular herbal and dietary supplements can also ...
Read more

Remember faces but not names? You got it wrong.

Image
Source:   Daily Excelsior So, you think you're good at remembering faces, but terrible with names? New research has revealed we are actually better at remembering names than faces The cringe-worthy experience of not being able to remember an acquaintance's name leads many of us to believe we are terrible with names. However, new research has revealed this intuition is misleading; we are actually better at remembering names than faces. With the Christmas party season fast approaching, there will be plenty of opportunity to re-live the familiar, and excruciatingly-awkward, social situation of not being able to remember an acquaintance's name. This cringe-worthy experience leads many of us to believe we are terrible at remembering names. However, new research has revealed this intuition is misleading; we are actually better at remembering names than faces. The authors of the study, from the University of York, suggest that when we castigate ourselves f...
Read more

Unhappy in a relationship? Why do you stay?

Image
Source:   Power of Positivity A story that may effect the development of your romantic comedies.  Why do people stay in unhappy relationships?  Simply put, it's concern for the partner of the unhappy person. This research doesn't offer solutions to this situation, but does help our understanding of why people behave the way they do. NOTE:  Within five minutes this post had 16 hits, the fastest hit rate of any story I've posted.  Might say something of how people feel. Here's the story: *  *  *  *  * When you are unhappy in a relationship, why do you stay?  The answer may surprise you. Study that finds it's not just the investment of time, resources and emotion Why do people stay in unsatisfying romantic relationships? A new study suggests it may be because they view leaving as bad for their partner. The study, being published in the November 2018 issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, e...
Read more

M.I.T. Research Explains How Will Rogers Observation Works

Image
Finally it appears that MIT has gotten involved in proving Will's syllogism, "There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves." Read his statement carefully.   ONE learns by reading.   A FEW who learn by observation. Then there's the rest of us. The reason for this, it turns out, is a special circuit in the brain that you or I need to have a functioning version of to actually learn by observing others.  Based on how we all behave, it is a circuit most of us must be missing.   Or perhaps it shorted out the first time we peed on an electric fence and it has yet to grow back.   *  *  *  *  * Brain circuit helps us learn by watching others Scientists pinpoint neural interactions that are necessary for observational learning Researchers have identified a brain circuit requir...
Read more

'Good guys' in superhero films more violent than villains

Image
I don't want to say that screenwriters are to blame for this, but we are certainly complicit.  In the quest to create the next blockbuster (while creating a upward career path), resorting to violence to resolve situations is an easy out.  While we could point the finger of blame at producers, studio heads and the money people behind them also want product that makes money, and violence often attracts larger audiences.  This is also true of theater owners and even merchandising company executives. There is plenty of blame to go around. *  *  *  *  * 'Good guys' in superhero films more violent than villains New research found that protagonists in superhero films engage in more violent acts than the villains. In a film genre more popular than ever, courageous superheroes wield special powers to protect the public from villains. But despite positive themes these films may offer, new research suggests superhero characters often i...
Read more