Exploring Adolescents’ Ratings of Social Profiles: The Impact of Eye Gaze
Justice-involved teens view strong eye gaze as shady, so check their view before you train the skill.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Anderson et al. (2025) asked two groups of teens to rate social profiles. One group was in the justice system. The other group was typical.
Each profile showed a teen with high, medium, or low eye gaze. The kids marked how much they liked the person and if they thought the person had friends.
What they found
Both groups disliked the low-gaze profile the most. That part was the same.
Justice-involved teens saw high eye gaze as fake, not attentive. They also thought the "normal" profile would have fewer friends.
How this fits with other research
Ma et al. (2021) pooled eye-tracking studies and found kids with autism look at eyes less everywhere on Earth. Anderson’s mixed group likely had some of these kids, yet the justice teens still read high gaze as odd.
Cohrs et al. (2017) showed youth with autism skip peer social scenes. Anderson shows justice youth do notice gaze, but judge it harshly. The two studies point to different social lenses, not missed cues.
Müller et al. (2016) linked short eye fixation to poor social scores in autism. Anderson flips the view: even typical-looking gaze can get a bad score if the watcher has court contact.
Why it matters
Before you teach eye contact, ask the teen what gaze means to them. Justice-involved youth may see high gaze as a threat, not a skill. Pair your lessons with their view so you build trust, not just eye contact.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Abstract Understanding the impact of eye gaze on social interactions may mitigate some risks for adolescents who are either currently justice-involved or at risk of contacting the justice system. At present, there are no universally accepted assessments for determining age-appropriate levels of eye gaze for adolescents during social interactions. One way to evaluate an individual’s sensitivity to eye gaze is to determine if they can detect different levels of eye gaze in other people. Bush et al. Developmental Neurorehabilitation, 25, 263–273, (2021) created three videos (profiles) of an actor displaying three different levels of eye gaze (directed toward an off-screen interviewer) and then asked college students to rate the actor in the three profiles using six statements. Bush et al. found college students provided the most favorable ratings for the profile with a high, but not the highest, level of eye gaze. This study used the same three video profiles of a speaker and six statements to assess ratings by two groups: non-justice-involved adolescents and justice-involved adolescents. Results indicate both groups rated the three speaker profiles differently for some statements. In particular, both groups rated the low eye gaze profile less favorably than the other two profiles. Analyses also revealed (1) non-justice-involved adolescents rated the high eye gaze profile as less attentive but more likely to get an important job than the justice-involved group and (2) justice-involved adolescents rated the “socially valid” profile as less likely to have friends than non-justice-involved adolescents. Implications and next steps are discussed.
Behavior and Social Issues, 2025 · doi:10.1007/s42822-025-00196-7