Cultural differences in mutual gaze during face-to-face interactions: A dual head-mounted eye-tracking study

ABSTRACT

Cross-cultural psychologists have widely discussed “gaze avoidance” as a sociocultural norm to describe reduced mutual gaze in East Asians (EAs) compared to Western Caucasians (WCs). Supportive evidence is primarily based on self-reports and video recordings of face-to-face interactions, but more objective techniques that can investigate the micro-dynamics of gaze are scarce. The current study used dual head-mounted eye-tracking in EA and WC dyads to examine face looking and mutual gaze during live social interactions. Both cultural groups showed more face looking when listening than speaking, and during an introductory task compared to a storytelling game. Crucially, compared to WCs, EA dyads spent significantly more time engaging in mutual gaze, and individual instances of mutual gaze were longer in EAs for the storytelling game. Our findings challenge “gaze avoidance” as a generalizable cultural observation, and highlight the need to consider contextual factors that dynamically influence gaze both within and between cultures.

KEYWORDS:

• Mutual gaze
• head-mounted eye-tracking
• culture
• gaze avoidance
• social interaction

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Medical Research Council (MR/K016806/1, G1100252) and Wellcome Trust/Birkbeck Institutional Strategic Support Fund (204770/Z/16/Z). We thank Pakling An and Nanami Harada for help with translations.

Data availability statement

The raw datasets (scene videos) are not publicly available since they disclose personally identifiable information. However, all processed data analyzed for this study are made available in anonymised form with DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/A7U6D (https://osf.io/a7u6d/).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Correlational analyses on the 40 dyads were also conducted to explore whether associations in face looking existed between individual 1 and individual 2 (from the same dyad); no significant correlations were identified (all p > 0.05).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Medical Research Council [grant number MR/K016806/1, G1100252] and Wellcome Trust/Birkbeck Institutional Strategic Support Fund [grant number 204770/Z/16/Z].