Social Meanings of Eye Contact
Eye contact and facial expressions provide important social and emotional information. People, perhaps without consciously doing so, probe each other's eyes and faces for positive or negative mood signs. In some contexts, the meeting of eyes arouses strong emotions.
Eye contact is also an important element in flirting, where it may serve to establish and gauge the other's interest in some situations.
Mutual eye contact that signals attraction initially begins as a brief glance and progresses into a repeated volleying of eye contact, according to Beverly Palmer, Ph.D. and professor of psychology at California State University, Dominguez Hills.
In the process of civil inattention, strangers in close proximity, such as a crowd, avoid eye contact in order to help maintain their privacy.
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“If a playwright tried to see eye to eye with everybody, he would get the worst case of strabismus since Hannibal lost an eye trying to count his nineteen elephants during a snowstorm while crossing the Alps.”
—James Thurber (1894–1961)
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—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)