You may feel your eyes meet with others

Even though people may feel they are making eye-contact with others, nevertheless the eyes of others are not actually gazing at their eyes. For example, people mistakenly believe that eye-contact is established when a partner is gazing at their nose. We found that eye-contact perception not only depends on the partner’s physical eye direction but also such psychological factors as individual social anxiety and situational factors, including partner’s gender. We expect to apply our findings to video communication systems, where users sometimes feel difficulty to hold their eye-contacts, so that users can naturally use eye-contact. Our findings may also reduce gaze phobia by elucidating why people focus on the gazes of others.

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