The links between direct gaze and social cognition – implications for impression accuracy and joint attention (opens in new tab)

Human eyes are hypothesized to play a critical role in social cognition, but this hypothesis has yet to be tested concretely in naturalistic settings. This study investigated how direct gaze (i.e., looking someone in their eyes) during live interactions contributes to impression formation and subsequent social cognition processes. Participants were invited to interact with confederates acting as impression targets (e.g., four different people, one at a time), rated each target’s personality a...