The eye contact conundrum

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I was interested to come across an article http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/sideways-view/201412/the-secrets-eye-contact-revealed?utm_source=FacebookPost&utm_medium=FBPost&utm_campaign=FBPost which discusses the social intricacies of eye contact and this paragraph caught my eye:

This is why people think you have romantic interest if you keep eye contact for longer than a second or two. But I was trying to think about my own experience and realised that I am naturally more likely to hold eye contact for longer when the person I am speaking to is talking about a topic I find interesting - it's not necessarily related to how I feel about that person. I may end up finding them more interesting because they talk about things that I am interested in, but I will probably still find the communication more important than the personal relationship.

Does anyone else think this way too?

I'm NT and nothing like this has crossed my mind.

In all honesty, I have never really paid attention to what eye contact or body language means, so any faculty I have associated with processing those things must be entirely subconscious. I do not and have never had any conscious uses for such things, other than when I have specifically being testing their function (upon reading).

Once I got my autistic friend to stare into my eyes for 3 seconds and his pupils dilated massively, and I felt a wave of warmth crash over me. I don't know if that was out of fear or happiness but I suppose that could be relevant.

I've read that pupil dilation is associated with strong emotion, typically positive. Often pupil dilation happens in conversation when the people conversing are interested in either the topic of speech or the other person.

That would explain why men seem to think I'm interested in them when I'm not. I've thought of that, but it's hard for me to believe that just looking at someone a few seconds too long could give that impression.

I do tend to lock on and just stare when I make eye contact with someone. I have trouble doing that glancing away and back again thing. I can do it but I have to think about it constantly.

Do you not find staring painful? I don't always but often do which is why I avoid locking gaze. I don't understand how eye contact can be physically painful but I do experience it.

I also have to think about it all the time and I notice sometimes people give me these long gazes which seem to carry some additional meaning but I can never figure out what it is. Very occasionally I will meet someone with whom I can develop a short-hand in terms of exchanging 'looks' but most of the time, I have no idea what the heck the other people are on about.

When I first heard this about pupil dilation in college, I sort of freaked out about it because I didn't know if mine were dilating and was scared someone I liked would see it and think something. Back then I didn't fully understand how other people take me and how they really think and I thought it would be wrong or creepy if I liked them that way before they liked me. This idea was probably borne out of past experiences that I didn't understand. I didn't fully understand the whole non-platonic attraction thing and was scared of it too. I wanted it, but couldn't handle it.

I was also told that my eyes were generally always dilated. I also found out from my college courses or some place that that was a sign of being on drugs so then I thought people must have been thinking I was on drugs. This didn't help anything. So then I was super conscious of trying not to look like I was on drugs, like looking around more, not staring at the ground when walking. Someone told me I looked like I was walking around asleep in high school once. That had really stuck with me.

I guess there's something in it, as they've been saying that about eye contact for decades. I don't tend to make much eye contact myself, and when I do, I tend to glance away quite frequently. I do that because I feel invaded if anybody stares at me that long, unless we're very close, and I don't want to make people feel invaded. It's probably a good idea to cultivate glancing away so that the gaze doesn't lock on for too long, to avoid sending inappropriate signals of interest or threat.

I don't it means romantic interest when you look someone in the eyes for multiple seconds at a time. If that were so, then all of my NT research participants are romantically interested in each other, and most of them are homosexual.

I found this article interesting. Though, I am not altogether certain I fully understand this eye contact stuff.

As an example, say two people (call them A and B) are talking and making what is considered to be normal eye contact. And, suddenly A’s eyes dilate.

1. Is this (eye dilation) something that B notices all the time? Is this consciously or subconsciously?
2. Does B form an opinion of A (be it what A is feeling or whether A is a good/bad person or ...) based upon this?

One more thing. The article stated: “We can accurately read emotions just from eye slits, which is why talking to people wearing dark glasses, or worse, mirrored lenses can be so problematic.”

Funny, I prefer to speak to people when they are wearing dark glasses. As that is the one time, I look straight into the glasses (otherwise, I focus my gaze on the moving mouth). LOL.

I think it's usually unconscious.

I think it would influence B's opinion of A.


If you're autistic, you might well prefer to speak to them when they're wearing dark glasses - there's nothing to lose because the eye contact communication wasn't working anyway, and some of us find it distracting and uncomfortable to look at eyes. The neurotypical has problems with it because the eye communication is suddenly missing.