Situational and personality determinants of social attention in a waiting room scenario

Eye gaze allows extracting information but also signals the current focus of attention to conspecifics. Social gaze thus needs to be investigated in real social scenarios. In such conditions, fixations on other persons are often avoided, presumably because an interaction is possible but not desired. The current study examined this hypothesis and also addressed potential influences of social skills on fixation patterns. In a waiting room situation with a stranger, we varied the potential for an interaction, while eye movements were recorded. Analyses replicated an avoidance of looking at the other person which, however, was not modulated by the potential for an interaction. Autism spectrum traits and social skills were largely unrelated to the pattern of fixations. These results indicate that social norms dominate visual attention in such waiting room scenario and challenge the notion that social skills are specifically relevant for adjusting visual exploration behaviour to situational demands.