The Role of Mutual Eye Contact in Conversation
During a conversation, individuals can reveal a great deal about themselves through their eyes. But is direct eye contact essential for effective communication, or is merely looking at each other’s faces sufficient?
A study conducted by researchers in Canada reveals that mutual looking, where each participant looks at the other’s face at the same time, is infrequent during conversations. Eyeball-to-eyeball contact is even rarer, but the limited instances of such contact predict the likelihood of one participant following the other’s gaze as the conversation progresses.
According to the researchers, mutual looking is a fundamental nonverbal communication behavior that has not been extensively studied. The team attributes this to the limitations of previously available mobile eye-tracking technology, which has hindered the accurate measurement of eye movement during real-life interactions.
Dr. Florence Mayrand, an experimental psychologist at McGill University in Canada and the study’s lead author, emphasizes the significance of eye-to-eye contact in social dynamics. She notes that the duration of direct eye-to-eye contact, even if only for a few seconds, can significantly influence subsequent social behavior.
The study involved observing eye-gazing patterns during face-to-face conversations between 15 pairs of strangers aged between 18 and 24. Participants were equipped with mobile eye-tracking glasses with a front-facing camera to record their field of view. The researchers recorded the frequency of participants looking at each other’s mouths and eyes and analyzed their gaze in response to images of their partner’s face.
Surprisingly, the findings contradicted previous research that emphasized the importance of eye contact in communication. The researchers discovered that only about 12% of conversation time involved interactive looking, with participants gazing at each other’s faces simultaneously for just 12% of the interaction duration. The study also found that mutual eye-to-eye contact occurred only 3.5% of the time.
However, when mutual eye contact did occur, it increased the likelihood of one participant following the other’s gaze. Moreover, mutual eye-to-mouth looks were linked to a tendency to follow the partner’s gaze in subsequent interactions.
The study’s authors emphasized the importance of the amount of time individuals spend looking into each other’s eyes in communicating social messages. Furthermore, they suggested that different patterns of mutual looking could facilitate the transmission of specific messages.
Overall, the study’s small sample size necessitates further research to validate the results. The researchers also acknowledged the need to examine how conversational context influences face-to-face interactions. They concluded that the contextual nuances of social messages communicated through eye contact are compelling research questions for future studies.
The study has been published in Scientific Reports.
