Are you looking my way? Ostracism widens the cone of gaze.
Ostracized individuals demonstrate an increased need for belonging. To satisfy this need, they search for signals of inclusion, one of which may be another person's gaze directed at oneself. We tested if ostracized, compared to included, individuals judge a greater degree of averted gaze as still being direct. This range of gaze angles still viewed as direct has been dubbed "the cone of (direct) gaze". In the current research, ostracized and included participants viewed friendly-looking face stimuli with direct or slightly averted gaze (0°, 2°, 4°, 6°, and 8° to the left and to the right) and judged whether stimulus persons were looking at them or not. Ostracized individuals demonstrated a wider gaze cone than included individuals.
a Human Information Processing Laboratory, School of Social Sciences and Humanities/Psychology , University of Tampere , Tampere , Finland.
Pessi
P
Lyyra
b Department of Psychology , The Ohio State University at Newark , Newark , OH , USA.
James H
JH
Wirth
a Human Information Processing Laboratory, School of Social Sciences and Humanities/Psychology , University of Tampere , Tampere , Finland.
Jari K
JK
Hietanen
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D005403:Fixation, Ocular / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D007600:Judgment / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D012059:Rejection, Psychology; D012934:Social Isolation / Q000523:psychology; D055815:Young Adult
Cone of gaze; Eye contact perception; Gaze perception; Ostracism