Research has shown that people’s gaze is biased away from faces in the real-world but
towards them when they are viewed onscreen. Non-equivalent stimulus conditions may have
represented a confound in this research however, as participants viewed onscreen stimuli as
pre-recordings where interaction was not possible, compared to real-world stimuli which
were viewed in real-time where interaction was possible. We assessed the independent
contributions of online social presence and ability for interaction on social gaze by
developing the “live lab” paradigm. Participants in three groups (N = 132) viewed a
confederate either as a) a live webcam stream where interaction was not possible (one-way),
b) a live webcam stream where an interaction was possible (two-way) or c) as a prerecording.
Potential for interaction, rather than online social presence, was the primary
influence on gaze behaviour: Participants in the pre-recorded and one-way conditions looked
more to the face than those in the two-way condition, particularly when the confederate made
“eye contact”. Fixation durations to the face were shorter when the scene was viewed live,
particularly during a bid for eye contact
Our findings support the dual function of gaze, but suggest that online social presence alone
is not sufficient to activate social norms of civil inattention. Implications for the
reinterpretation of previous research are discussed
