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Abstract
Successful human social interactions frequently rely on appropriate interpersonal empathy and eye contact. Here, we report a previously unseen relationship between trait empathy and eye-gaze patterns to affective facial features in video-based stimuli. Fifty-nine healthy adult participants had their eyes tracked while watching a three-minute long “sad” and “emotionally neutral” video. The video stimuli portrayed the head and shoulders of the same actor recounting a fictional personal event. Analyses revealed that the greater participants' trait emotional empathy, the more they fixated on the eye-region of the actor, regardless of the emotional valence of the video stimuli. Our findings provide the first empirical evidence of a relationship between empathic capacity and eye-gaze pattern to the most affective facial region (eyes).
The authors wish to acknowledge Rebecca King for her help in creating the stimuli. We also thank Dr Julie Henry of the University of Queensland for her helpful comments on an early draft of this article.
This study was partially supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Project [grant DP 110100602].
The authors wish to acknowledge Rebecca King for her help in creating the stimuli. We also thank Dr Julie Henry of the University of Queensland for her helpful comments on an early draft of this article.
This study was partially supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Project [grant DP 110100602].