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eye contact
You avoid eye contact to manage your own arousal.
Eye contact is a high-arousal stimulus that people regulate to manage their cognitive and emotional load.
Too much eye contact can be overwhelming, leading you to look away as a way to regulate your internal stimulation. This is not necessarily about shyness, but a strategy to keep your brain from being over-stimulated during interaction.
You look away to protect your focus.
Where this comes from
- Study
- Argyle and Cook, 1976, Gaze and Mutual Gaze
- What the check found
- The claim accurately captures the core premise of the Equilibrium Theory as presented in Argyle and Cook (1976), though the 'high-arousal' mechanism has faced mixed empirical support in replications.
- Confidence
- Solid, with limits
Related
One of these every day, and every one names the study it came from. When a finding is contested, it says so.