Eye contact affects attention more than arousal as revealed by prospective time estimation

Eye contact can both increase arousal and engage attention. Because these two changes impact time estimation differently, we were able to use a prospective time estimation task to assess the relative changes in arousal and attention during eye contact. Pairs of participants made a 1-minute prospective time estimate while sitting side-by-side and performing three different gaze trials: looking at the wall away from their partner ( baseline/away trials ), looking at their partner’s profile ( profile trials ), or making eye contact with their partner ( eye contact trials ). We found that participants produced significantly longer estimates when they were engaged in eye contact, more so than when they looked at another person’s profile or baseline. As research has shown that people produce shorter estimates during arousing events and longer estimates when attention is captured, we attribute this difference to the attention-demanding process of interacting with another person, via mutual eye contact, over and above any changes in arousal.