Eye Contact and Communication of Facilitative Conditions

Abstract

This study investigated the effects of a counselor's eye contact on the counselor's communication of facultative conditions. 48 undergraduate and graduate majors in education were randomly assigned to one of six types of 10-min. counseling sessions, representing two levels of eye direction (eye-to-eye and eye-to-nose/mouth) and three amounts of eye contact (high, medium, low). Interviews were videotaped. All subjects met with the same counselor. Interrater reliability was .87 for the counselor's maintenance of amount of eye contact and .03 for direction. Two raters independently assessed the counselor's communicated facilitative conditions with high agreement. A two-way analysis of variance with Scheffé's comparisons showed that the communication of respect and genuineness is positively and significantly related to greater eye contact.