Abstract
This study investigated whether eye contact perception differs in people with different cultural backgrounds. Finnish (European) and Japanese (East Asian) participants were asked to determine whether Finnish and Japanese neutral faces with various gaze directions were looking at them. Further, participants rated the face stimuli for emotion and other affect-related dimensions. The results indicated that Finnish viewers had a smaller bias toward judging slightly averted gazes as directed at them when judging Finnish rather than Japanese faces, while the bias of Japanese viewers did not differ between faces from their own and other cultural backgrounds. This may be explained by Westerners experiencing more eye contact in their daily life leading to larger visual experience of gaze perception generally, and to more accurate perception of eye contact with people from their own cultural background particularly. The results also revealed cultural differences in the perception of emotion from neutral faces that could also contribute to the bias in eye contact perception.
Highlights
IntroductionIn contrast to the eyes of other primates, the human eye has a distinctive structure consisting of a white sclera and dark iris
We found a main effect of stimulus faces’ cultural background (F (1, 58) = 4.99, p = .029), indicating that the gaze deviation degree with a 50% probability of eye-contact acceptance was greater for Japanese than Finnish faces
The results revealed that the highest frequency of looking-at-me responses was observed for the “true” direct gaze, and there was no abrupt decrease in the looking-at-me responses as the stimulus faces’ gaze direction deviated in 2° increments from 0° to 10°
Summary
In contrast to the eyes of other primates, the human eye has a distinctive structure consisting of a white sclera and dark iris This allows the discrimination of direct and averted gaze and easy recognition of others’ attentional focus. Previous studies have demonstrated that observing the direct gaze of others elicits higher skin conductance responses [7], enhanced heart rate deceleration responses [8], greater visual event-related brain potentials [9,10], and greater left-lateralized frontal EEG activity [11]—a pattern of EEG activity associated with approach motivation—than observing an averted gaze.
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