I was at a teacher training program recently, and was told not to insist upon making eye contact with children from certain cultures. They said it is a sign of disrespect in some parts of the world.
Where is this the case?
What other connotations does eye contact have in other cultures?
Making eye contact with your social betters has been, and still is, a sign of disrepect in most cultures. The custom was relatively stongly enforced amongst Aborigines and (at least according to my Sifu) southern Chinese. This isn’t so much the case tody. Of course making eye contact with a social superior was actually a crime in many medieval societies in Asia, Europe and the middle east.
It’s at least partially an evolutionary thing and seems inbuilt into the human brain. Making sustained eye contact is a form of challenge or sexual invitation amongst humans.
Yes, in less enlightened times Aboriginal children who looked at the floor when hauled up before the teacher were given a clip across the ear, and told to “look at me, boy, when I’m talking to you”. The kid would go home, and armed with this new knowledge would look his father in the eye and…
It’s interesting to watch different animals’ approach to eye contact with humans. Dogs seem to like it, but cats find eye contact a threat, and if you stare at one, it will often do that slow half eye closure which means “Hey, it’s cool” in cat.
In some cultures, a woman making eye contact with a man is a come on, especially if she smiles.
The signals conveyed by Staring Eyes are deep-wired, and obviously of ancient origin. Stares are sed as signals by primates, by cats and dogs, etc. Insects startle possible predators with false Eye Signals. There are butterflies, moths, and caterpillars with false Eyes on their wings or bodies, but not ears or noses. For that matter, we have the Evil Eye (which stares a you), but there’s no Evil Tongue. People feel edgy if they think they’re bein watched – but not if they think they’re being smelled. It’s spooky when the Eyes of a painting seem to follow you around a room, but not if as in Gary Larson cartoon) the Nose seems to folow you.
In a lot of primates the primary meaning of a diect sare is a challenge. Don’t look gorilla in the eye. I think his carries through to people, as well. It was true in Western culture, too, until recently. In the play and the movie The Madness of George III the King rebukes someone for staring directly at him. (Apparently, despite the saying tha “Even a Cat may look a a King”, servants can’t.)
I was once involved in a dispute over an aluminium ferry being built for a company based in Zamboanga, on the island of Mindanao in the southern Philippines. The president of the company told me that the seats on the ferry had to be built facing one direction. If the seats were built allowing people to look at each other, the president was worried that this would cause fights by allowing eye contact between his passengers.