Don't look at me like that!



It's a phenomenon that most of us have undoubtedly all encountered. Someone turns to face you while you're in the midst of a bustling crowd of people. You pick it up right away. In actuality, processing and registering this eye contact takes no longer than a nanosecond.

What transpires during eye contact psychologically speaking? This is what Anne Böckler-Raettig, a professor at the University of Würzburg's Department of Psychology III, is interested in (JMU). She has led the research team "More than meets the eye: Integration, influences, and impairments of direct gaze processing" since 2017 and has a particular interest in social cognition.

Böckler-Raettig has now deciphered new data regarding how humans process gazes and facial expressions along with her colleagues and experts from the USA and Canada. The Journal of Experimental Psychology is where she publishes the findings of her research.

Dr. Christina Breil, the study's first author, says, "We were able to demonstrate that the emotional expressions of faces influence how their gazes shape our attention." In specific words, this means that: When someone looks directly at an observer, or makes eye contact, their face shows delight, an emotion that expresses approach (which also signals approach). The same is true of an angry facial expression because, psychologically speaking, fury is likewise an emotion that is approach-oriented.

When an emotion is avoidance-oriented, like disgust or dread, the situation is different. In these situations, the observer's attention is drawn more to averted glance (thus, avoidant gaze)                                                                                     
Böckler-Raettig and her team had previously shown in a study that faces with a neutral expression draw the observer's attention particularly successfully when those faces are looking directly at them. On a computer screen, four pictures of a woman's face were shown to the participants. The sole distinction between the faces was which ones were focused on the test subjects. Additionally, each face has a tiny number 8 written on its forehead.

"We replaced the four eights with letters exactly one and a half seconds later. There was either a S or a H among them "Böckler-Raettig says. The participants were instructed to respond as soon as these letters appeared on one of the four faces by hitting a S or a H on a keyboard, respectively, when they saw a S or an H. Then, the metric used to assess attention level was reaction time.

The findings of this study demonstrated that, despite the fact that faces can be disregarded for this job, people are more likely to recognize the pertinent letters when they are presented on a face that is gazing at them. Why? Because it draws our attention, the psychologist explains.

But how can various emotional expressions on the face impact direct gaze attention? Facial expressions and gaze direction are thought to have an especially powerful effect when they are consistent with "approach" or "avoidance," according to an intriguing theory.

According to Breil, "For instance, a happy face that directs its stare at you is consistent in that sense because happiness is an approach-oriented emotion and the direct gaze likewise indicates approach." A disgusted expression that turns away from the camera is also appropriate.

The team modified the original study's design to look into this effect. When the eights were presented in the modified version, the faces switched from a neutral look to one that was either approach- or avoidance-oriented, expressing wrath or fear in one series of studies and joy or disgust in the other.

This study included 102 participants in all. The findings are unambiguous: The quickest replies occur when pleasant facial expressions follow neutral ones and the focus is fixed on the observer. If the facial expression switches to disgust, the process is reversed. If the eyes is diverted, the response will be quicker.

The team conducted this experiment again and tracked participants' eye movements to better understand these findings. According to Böckler-Raettig, "We detect the similar pattern in eye movements: Participants stare quicker and longer at joyful faces that are gazing straight at them, while participants look faster at disgusted faces that are looking away."

This pattern suggests that people can process and integrate facial expression and gaze direction very rapidly and effectively, according to the psychologist. In actuality, this integration phase starts about 200 milliseconds after the stimulus is shown. The findings also imply that gazes are not processed independently of context and always have the same impact, as is commonly believed. The environment is important, even for simple activities like drawing attention with your eyes.

University of Würzburg

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