Social Meanings of Eye Contact
Eye contact and facial expressions provide important social and emotional information. People, perhaps without consciously doing so, probe each other's eyes and faces for positive or negative mood signs. In some contexts, the meeting of eyes arouses strong emotions.
Eye contact is also an important element in flirting, where it may serve to establish and gauge the other's interest in some situations.
Mutual eye contact that signals attraction initially begins as a brief glance and progresses into a repeated volleying of eye contact, according to Beverly Palmer, Ph.D. and professor of psychology at California State University, Dominguez Hills.
In the process of civil inattention, strangers in close proximity, such as a crowd, avoid eye contact in order to help maintain their privacy.
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Famous quotes containing the words social, meanings, eye and/or contact:
“The social kiss is an exchange of insincerity between two combatants on the field of social advancement. It places hygiene before affection and condescension before all else.”
—Sunday Correspondent (London, Aug. 12, 1990)
“Well, “slithy” means “lithe and slimy.” “Lithe” is the same as “active.” You see, it’s like a portmanteau—there are two meanings packed up into one word.”
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)
“The eye by long use comes to see even in the darkest cavern: and there is no subject so obscure but we may discern some glimpse of truth by long poring on it.”
—George Berkeley (1685–1753)
“ET phone home.”
—Melissa Mathison, U.S. screenwriter, and Steven Spielberg. ET, ET The Extra-Terrestrial, realizing he can contact his home planet (1982)