Nov
27
“One of the key tenets of “civil inattention” is the scrupulous avoidance of direct eye contact, and a number of studies have examined this variable. In one 1974 study, experimenters actively stared at people, then asked for help. Subjects were more likely to help when the person hadn’t been staring (echoing a long line of studies finding that people generally become uncomfortable in the face of an unprovoked or inappropriate gaze—unless, of course, the gazer is an attractive woman). Another paper, by Clark McCauley, et al., published in 1978 in Environmental Psychology and Nonverbal Behavior, looked at the overall willingness to make eye contact in a commuter train setting in a city environment (Philadelphia) and its suburbs. Commuters were more gaze-shy in the city (only 13 percent of passersby were willing in Philly, as opposed to 31 percent in Bryn Mawr). The authors attributed the results not to rudeness but to the overabundance of information available to process—as they put it, “interpersonal overload leads to social withdrawal.”
Tom Vanderbilt
