Imagine this scene: you are in a place full of people; your eyes cross the eyes of a stranger just for a second, in that moment you stay there, looking to each other, but then you look away as soon as possible.
Have you ever asked yourself why is so embarrassing to look someone else straight in the eyes? Here you can receive some answers.
Scientists at the University of Vincennes in Saint-Denis, France, have proved that the eye contact with other people revives the awareness of our body, so our brain became suddenly more conscious of the feelings that are having place inside us.
The psychologist Matias Baltazar showed to 32 volunteers a series of pictures representing positive and negative situations and asked them to tell the emotions caused by each one.
The 32 people were also connected to a special device that registered the emotive reactions through the hand sweating.
Each positive or negative photo had been preceded by another image of a male or female face: some of these faces stared at the volunteers, others had their gaze looking away.
Researcher discovered that, after the subjects saw the faces which stared at them in the eyes, they showed more effective and accurate descriptions of their physiological reactions to the positive or negative photos.
“Our results show that the body consciousness of an adult becomes more acute when we’re under someone else’s gaze”, says Baltazar. Researchers have proved that the improvement of the feeling description regards only the actions connected to the body consciousness.
This discovery could be useful to stimulate the consciousness in people who have a distorted view of their body as the ones who suffer from anorexia or depressive disorders.
Francesca Ferraro, 2B Ls
