ABSTRACT
This chapter is about the perception of gaze — how we perceive and understand where another face is looking, and the implications of these perceptions for our social and cognitive activities. Human eyes, like those of many other animals, are remarkably mobile. We have to move our eyes in order to bring different objects or areas of interest onto the fovea — the area of the retina with highest acuity. Faces themselves attract our gaze more than most other items in the world, as we discuss later on in this chapter. But most of the chapter is about how we decipher patterns of gaze in the faces we encounter, and the impacts observed gaze patterns have on us. In humans and some other animals eye movements are used for directly communicative or affiliative acts. Being stared at may be attractive, irritating or intimidating depending on the context, and the effects of being looked at can have powerful consequences that have been appreciated and used throughout history. Looking away from someone is also a social signal with multiple potential meanings that may be interpreted as an act of rudeness, untruthfulness, shyness or distraction.
