Unrelenting gaze is much worse and weirder. A co-worker and I used to sometimes swing by a drive-thru donut/coffee place to bring treats for the office. One day a new employee began working the drive-thru window. She takes the order the same way anybody else would, but when she hands you the items she looks directly at you and doesn’t look away for a good 5 or 6 seconds. Doesn’t sound like a long time, but for this kind of interaction, it is! Most people will just sort of glance, maybe say “Hi, how are you, that’s $10.34” and look around, at the register, a co-worker, whatever, in the second or two it takes for you to hand across the money. Not this woman. She hands out the food, looking at you intently, and even if you have the money ready and give it to her immediately she’ll hold her gaze for a few extra seconds before finishing the transaction. Once she gives you back your change or your card, instead of saying thanks and turning back to the task at hand readying the next order, she just kind of hangs there at the window…looking at you. It’s weird as can be. She doesn’t look or act hostile, or as though she has any kind of cognitive issues. I have friends and family on the autism spectrum, she doesn’t resemble that, either. So I guess this is just her way, maybe she figures it seems friendly, but yes, monstro, I find it creepy and uncomfortable. It always makes me want to say "…what?"
I’m guilty of both the “too much eye contact” and “not enough eye contact” sides of the spectrum. But I have reasons for that, and maybe these people do too.
I’m partially deaf, and if there is more than a certain amount/type of background noise, I have difficulty distinguishing speech or identifying the direction of sounds. I became partially deaf around age 7, and I suppose I was traumatized to some degree by upset reactions from other kids who thought I was “ignoring them” when I didn’t notice that they were trying to talk to me. To compensate for not being able to reliably tell if someone is trying to talk to me, I started to compulsively visually scan the faces of people around me, and end up locking gazes if they are looking in my direction. (For the same reason I also compulsively greet people when I pass them in the hallways, even if it’s the 15th time I’ve passed them that day.)
People get weirded out by that, so I switched to scanning people’s faces, locking gazes, and then immediately looking away, which weirds them out even more. I’ve never been able to break myself of this, even decades later, because I still can’t reliably tell if someone out of line-of-sight is trying to initiate a conversation, and it’s still more of a problem for me if I fail to notice.
And then just to weird everyone out just that little bit more, in noisy environments I make constant and excessive eye contact with people who are speaking (conversational partners as well as people giving lectures, etc.), because watching their faces helps me tell when they are speaking and follow what they’re saying.
The ironic part of this is that, given ideal hearing conditions, I prefer to make very little eye contact. So between it all, trying to calibrate to a socially acceptable level is quite hard… I mean, I would have been a socially awkward dork no matter what, but the deaf thing certainly did not help.
Staring too much, easily. Too little just comes off a shy. Too much just feels bad, in a way I can’t describe. I’ve literally never been annoyed by someone with too little eye contact.
That doesn’t mean that it’s not better to try and get it right. But, between the two extremes, I’d go with too little.
Also, facial expressions matter. Soft eye contact is less threatening. Looking nice and cheerful feels better. Looking in the general direction of the eyes feels better. A relaxed expression feels better.
I don’t know if I’ve ever met someone who wouldn’t break off eye contact. I’ve worked with several colleagues, however, who would not make eye contact, ever. Despite the fact that I’m generally sociable and enjoy meeting new people, the no-eye-contactors were impossible to establish even the most casual “Hi, how’s it going?” relationship with. Which was probably their object. It was disturbing and awkward, and made me think they have deep-seated psychological issues.