title: Direct Speaker Gaze Promotes Trust in Truth-Ambiguous Statements.
abstract: A speaker's gaze behaviour can provide perceivers with a multitude of cues which are relevant for communication, thus constituting an important non-verbal interaction channel. The present study investigated whether direct eye gaze of a speaker affects the likelihood of listeners believing truth-ambiguous statements. Participants were presented with videos in which a speaker produced such statements with either direct or averted gaze. The statements were selected through a rating study to ensure that participants were unlikely to know a-priori whether they were true or not (e.g., "sniffer dogs cannot smell the difference between identical twins"). Participants indicated in a forced-choice task whether or not they believed each statement. We found that participants were more likely to believe statements by a speaker looking at them directly, compared to a speaker with averted gaze. Moreover, when participants disagreed with a statement, they were slower to do so when the statement was uttered with direct (compared to averted) gaze, suggesting that the process of rejecting a statement as untrue may be inhibited when that statement is accompanied by direct gaze.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, General Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Jena, Germany.
authors.forename: Helene
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7163-7023
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Kreysa
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, General Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Jena, Germany.
authors.forename: Luise
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Kessler
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, General Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Jena, Germany.|DFG Research Unit Person Perception, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Jena, Germany.
authors.forename: Stefan R
authors.initials: SR
authors.lastname: Schweinberger
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D032882:Comprehension; D005133:Eye Movements; D005260:Female; D005403:Fixation, Ocular; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009633:Nonverbal Communication; D011930:Reaction Time; D013067:Speech Perception; D035502:Trust; D014796:Visual Perception; D055815:Young Adult