Language & Intelligence

One experiment found direct gaze made ambiguous statements seem more believable

A glance away in the opening seconds can undermine everything you say next, research suggests.

By: Global English Editing Editorial Team

Aug 20, 2026 2 min read Editorial standards Meet our editors

Direct gaze can affect whether a statement feels believable. One controlled experiment demonstrated that effect, but it does not show that avoided eye contact is among the fastest or most reliable ways to judge credibility.

What the direct-gaze experiment found

Helene Kreysa and colleagues showed participants short videos of a speaker making statements that were difficult to verify. In some videos the speaker looked directly toward the viewer; in others the gaze was averted. Participants were more likely to judge statements as true when they were delivered with direct gaze.

The design isolated gaze, which is a strength. Its scope was also narrow: one speaker, a particular set of statements, and judgments made in a laboratory. It measured perceived truth, not whether the speaker was actually honest.

Fast face judgments are a separate finding

Alexander Todorov’s research found that people form impressions from unfamiliar faces after very brief exposure. Those experiments help establish that first impressions can form quickly, but they did not test conversational eye contact as the cause of a credibility judgment.

Eye contact is not a lie detector

Context changes gaze. Culture, autism, anxiety, trauma, status, fatigue, and the demands of thinking while speaking can all affect how much eye contact a person makes. Direct gaze can increase perceived credibility in some settings without increasing actual accuracy.

A speaker who wants to appear engaged can look toward listeners at natural points and avoid reading continuously from a screen. A listener should still evaluate evidence, consistency, and content rather than treating gaze as proof. The experiment supports a tendency in perception, not a universal rule about trustworthy people.

Written by

Global English Editing Editorial Team

The Global English Editing Editorial Team produces our blog content covering writing, communication, the psychology of self-expression, and the dynamics of how people interact at work and in life. Articles reflect our team's collective editorial process, research, drafting, fact-checking, editing, and review, rather than a single individual's writing. Global English Editing takes editorial responsibility for content under this byline. For more on how we work, see our editorial standards.

One experiment found direct gaze made ambiguous statements seem more believable

What the direct-gaze experiment found

Fast face judgments are a separate finding

Eye contact is not a lie detector

Global English Editing Editorial Team

More from Language & Intelligence

Real confidence rarely needs to announce itself: it shows up as stillness under pressure, a level voice when everyone else in the room is raising theirs, a willingness to let silence sit for a few extra seconds, and no need to perform for an audience that was never really watching

Received Pronunciation, the accent linguists still nickname the Queen's English, took shape inside a handful of England's most expensive private schools, and it remains such a reliable marker of that background that a stranger can often place someone's education within a single sentence.

University of Arizona researchers wired 79 people with a recorder sampling conversations every 12.5 minutes for four days and found the happiest had twice as many substantive conversations and a third as much small talk as the unhappiest, suggesting the discomfort was never a social deficit.

Psychologists did not coin emotional intelligence until 1990, and Goleman's book did not popularize it until 1995, so people raised between 1945 and 1975 grew up with no shared vocabulary for feelings, many still improvising one from watching, guessing, and going quiet when intimacy calls for words.

What the direct-gaze experiment found

Fast face judgments are a separate finding

Eye contact is not a lie detector

Global English Editing Editorial Team

More from Language & Intelligence

Real confidence rarely needs to announce itself: it shows up as stillness under pressure, a level voice when everyone else in the room is raising theirs, a willingness to let silence sit for a few extra seconds, and no need to perform for an audience that was never really watching

Received Pronunciation, the accent linguists still nickname the Queen's English, took shape inside a handful of England's most expensive private schools, and it remains such a reliable marker of that background that a stranger can often place someone's education within a single sentence.

University of Arizona researchers wired 79 people with a recorder sampling conversations every 12.5 minutes for four days and found the happiest had twice as many substantive conversations and a third as much small talk as the unhappiest, suggesting the discomfort was never a social deficit.

A letter from our editors