eye contact and cultures

[Ravkrat]

Okay before i type anymore( The Role of Eye Contact in Different Cultures | Joy Tour & Travel )the article i'll be using has reference.
Where im brought up(texas) eye contact is a given when your speaking or being spoken to you try to hold eye contact..the only thing is,is that i seem to follow the eastern(china/japan) idea of eye contact meaning if someone is speaking to me I keep my eyes off to the side of whoever is speaking or simply away from them.
Was curious if anyone else was like this?

..why you quote a blog?! Because i'm lazy and dont want to look up research papers :lol:

 

[Aspieistj]

I don't like to make eye contact and have had to learn yet another adaptation to keeping the NT world happy.

 

[tryingtoregister]

yea people often will ask me where I'm looking when I'm speaking.. I've kind of learned to make eye contact but it always makes me uneasy and I can't hold it for long though which makes ppl think I'm nervous or lying for some reason.. very frustating to say the least lol

 

[Ste11aeres]

I don't make eye contact, but people don't seem to care. Sometimes (like during a job interview) I still have to look at somebody's face. I don't like it, but can manage, especially if I simply look at the face as a whole without thinking about it too much.

I just realized the necessity of looking at the person is one of the main things that makes me uncomfortable during certain interactions such as job interviews.

 

[TheBlankCanvas]

I don't like making eye contact, to avoid people mentioning it though, I usually just pretend to be looking for something / doing something whenever I can while talking to them. It works most of the time, but sometimes they get offended because they think I'm not listening to them.

 

[Turk]

I normally dont like eye contact either. And it causes me a great deal of anxiety to hold it, for any period. For some reason when im wearing sunglasses, I have no problem, holding eye contact. For about 6 months I wore my sunn glasses when talking to ppl. I looked like a right idiot, when we were indoors. However, over this period of time, I managed to replace my eye contact avoidance, with something more socially acceptable. I kinda have to visualize, that ive still got my glass's on, but it has proven to be effective for me. If you think about it, eyes supposed to be windows to our soul. Maybe we dont just want anyone looking at it.

Cheers
Turk

 

[King_Oni]

I don't neccesarily have an issue with eye contact... though I tend to wear shades quite often. It really depends if I will take them off indoors, but it has little to do with the eye contact issue and just with overall light sensitivity.

Someone once asked me to take off my shades and I told him "Fine, but I will not be held responsible for death by optic blast". (any comicbook readers might chuckle now)

With me it's more that I make people look away when I actually make eye contact. For some reason it makes people uncomfortable I guess.

As for the social etiquette to it... I haven't really cared about such rules for quite a while. I don't care to shake hands either and that seems to be quite the thing for NT folks as well.

 

[Spinning Compass]

I don't like eye contact, either. It's like someone can see right into your soul and read your mind. But I find that if I look in the general direction of the face rather than the eyes directly, it's not so noticeable, although that was hard for me, too. I've noticed, though, that people don't constantly stare at each other when talking anyway. So that helps. Also the awareness of different cultures helps.