Asklemmy

50524 readers

1021 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 6 years ago

MODERATORS

Do people know I'm not looking at them when talking to them? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 3 weeks ago by Mike_Hunt@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

4 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I was watching a video about a painting and the commentary mentioned how it looks at you and most people in the comments mentioned the same thing but to me, it was like she was looking behind me (this is going somewhere) commonly I don't make much eye contact so to get around this I look at the space between the eyes of whoever I'm talking to with occasional looking at the eyes quickly, is this noticeable on their end? Because when I looked at the painting in the eyes, she was looking at me as well, and it felt like a massive difference.

The painting in question for anyone interested.

top 4 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] dmention7@midwest.social 15 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

There are kind of two different questions here.

First of all yes, humans are pretty good at telling whether someone is looking them directly in the eyes or not. So if you were to ask someone directly whether you are looking in their eyes or some other part of the face, they would probably be right most of the time.

The second part is whether they would notice it consciously without bring asked. That's a little trickier. I suspect if you were staring directly at some other part of their face, people might get self conscious (do I have a zit? Is my nose that huge?) But looking at a spot between their eyes, or shiftng your gaze periodically would probably fly under the radar.

[–] blackbrook@mander.xyz 5 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

I become aware of which eye I am looking at when talking to someone who has eyes that are misaligned. Like, maybe they have one glass eye or one eye that has some problem... I become self conscious that I might be looking at the wrong eye and worried they might be offended.

But I'm pretty sure I'm never aware of which one my eyes another person is looking at, or when their gaze switches. So I really doubt I could tell if someone were looking right between my eyes. Maybe if they were really close.

[–] Admetus@sopuli.xyz 9 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

To me, the lady is not really looking at anything, but yes, her eyes are directed behind my shoulder.

The eye contact 'language' is complicated. Sometimes I'm facing someone directly. I'm probably looking towards their eyes 90% of the time with an occasional look in another direction as I process the conversation. Other times I'm faced away in a posture that shows I'm listening (I'm hard of hearing so sometimes I need to have an ear facing towards them); then I'll be looking towards their eyes 20%-ish of the time.

I think it depends on the context. In a formal setting facing each other, looking away could be misinterpreted, and eye contact is a skill to be cultivated. Call it 'cultivating charisma'. I'm a teacher and had to develop quite a lot of experience in it, and popularity tends to scale with its effectiveness.

[–] UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.ml 3 points 3 weeks ago

No staring at you, just having a existential crisis.