I’m wondering if there’s an objective standard for determining whether a person is staring or “just looking.” Suppose you feel that someone is staring at you. Feeling, perhaps justifiably, uncomfortable with this (after all, among our primate cousins, and probably our proto-human ancestors, staring is an insulting challenge), you ask the person to stop staring at you. (Or, ‘Whadda YOU lookin’ at!?!’, depending on your style and/or mood and/or blood alcohol level.)
Based on my personal observations, and assuming a not overly belligerent inquiry on the part of the staree/lookee, I’d estimate that roughly seventy percent of the time the response includes the phrase, ‘I wasn’t staring.’
So, the question is, could an observer OBJECTIVELY determine whether whether the accused was, in fact, staring and not “just looking?”
The Federal Staring Standard is still under development AFAIK but here’s my take.
First, looking at a person for longer than a passing glance (1-2 seconds) is staring. “Just looking” is the phrase used when speaking to a salesperson to indication you’re not ready to buy anything. “Just looking” at another person is staring.
Let’s approach this from the standpoint of the observer for a moment. Supposed you want to check somebody out without being obvious or rude. There are two considerations: detection by the subject, or detection by other bystanders, the latter of which we will set aside. You can get away with a lot until the subject makes eye contact, however brief, at which point you know you have been detected. At that point, any further looking qualifies as staring, since you are looking in flagrant disregard of the subject’s sensibilities. However, repeated glances, however frequent, do not qualify as staring, unless, again, the subject makes eye contact during more than one of these glances. However, if the subject makes eye contact, holds it, and smiles, then staring might be welcome in this instance. However, I believe this is rare.
Now we’ll flip this. If you notice somebody is looking at you, and you glance back for brief eye contact (.2 sec) followed by a neutral facial expression and then acting like you did not actually see them, and they do not break off from looking, then they are staring, even if the looking continues only for a couple of seconds.
These are unwritten rules so are subject to cultural and personal interpretation. For example, on the streets of NYC you would avoid all eye contact whatsoever (or so I have heard) and the tolerance for staring would be much lower than in some other locales. So therefore, the answer to you question is that there is no objective standard applicable in all situations.
I’ve been accused of staring, when in fact, I was practically unaware of the accuser’s presence. Thinking about a technical problem, facing straight ahead, and neglecting to close my eyes. Watcha gonna do?