Eye to I

This is the story of the language of eyes - what they say about our emotions, what they reveal about our intentions, how they interact with our face, and how they connect us to one another. The story follows our experience with eyes from infancy when we first learn to connect looking with knowing. This connection forms the foundation of our social understanding and has evolutionary implications. From there the story moves to gaze in love, and other social encounters. I look at the role of eye gaze in the judgments we make about others - the way in which direct eye contact may affect how likable or attractive we find another person. I then turn to these questions: how much of an eye does it take for us to feel watched? Do pictures of eyes affect us? What about the eyes of a robot - do we respond to them as we do to human eyes? I show that for those who have normally functioning eyes, attention to the eye region plays a critical role in how we learn about the social world and our place in it.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Graduate Program in Science Writing

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2007

Author dc:creator

• Brunstein, Ada

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Alan Lightman.

• Graduate Program in Science Writing.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/42147

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/42147