Attentional Territories

Human gaze is a powerful social signal, yet little is known about how gaze interactions between others influence the behavior of uninvolved observers in shared environments. This project investigates whether mutual gaze between two individuals implicitly marks surrounding space as socially occupied, creating an “attentional territory” that third parties tend to avoid. In a large-scale field study conducted across four university campuses in Europe and Canada (N = 4,680 pedestrians), two confederates stood facing one another while gaze behavior (mutual, unilateral, or no interaction) and interpersonal distance (2–6 m) were systematically manipulated. Pedestrians were significantly less likely to pass between individuals engaged in mutual gaze, an effect that weakened with increasing distance but was robust across locations.