The widely held belief that “the eyes never lie” suggests that gaze is one of the so-called honest signals revealing a person’s true intentions and emotions. However, people highly value their privacy and often try to disclose not more than intended. We have, however, a limited understanding of which gaze measures (e.g., fixation rate, blink frequency, and pupil motion) express such internal states and how other persons perceive those in interactions. In existing research, gaze measures are often researched in isolation and in controlled non-social settings, limiting their applicability to dynamic social interactions. Therefore, we will examine gaze expressions and their perception in social settings. Card games are chosen as the experimental setting since they provide a controlled yet dynamic environment where players strategically manage their gaze to influence others. Studying gaze measures in social card game interactions ensures ecological validity. Games provide the opportunity for parallel investigation in authentic social interactions in real environments (Prof. Huckauf) and simulated virtual environments (Prof. Rukzio). Virtual environments have the advantage of allowing very precise manipulation of gaze measures in a virtual avatar, which is not feasible in real environments. This provides a unique testbed for exploring gaze expression in a very controlled way to replicate our findings from the studies in real environments and validate our assumptions. Furthermore, the virtual environment allows the investigation of human players’ perceptions of the gaze expressions of virtual avatars. These expressions can manipulate the player’s strategy and playing behavior. It is, therefore, our goal, with Objective 1, to measure and quantify players’ gaze expressions during bluffing, not bluffing, and low or high confidence in winning during card games. Building on this, Objective 2 focuses on determining whether these gaze expressions are produced and interpreted as meaningful communicative signals. Finally, Objective 3 seeks to explore how players’ gaze expressions during strategic moments, such as bluffing and confidence, can predict game outcomes and player reactions, as well as how an avatar’s gaze expression can manipulate players’ behavior. Ultimately, the project will extend our understanding of the human gaze by providing a framework for understanding how gaze expressions communicate complex cognitive-affective states of bluffing and confidence in winning and how gaze expressions are perceived and interpreted during real-time interaction in real and virtual environments. This knowledge could support the development of technology capable of interpreting such human emotions and intentions more accurately in digital environments, contributing to the creation of more sophisticated virtual agents that adapt to users’ mental states enhancing digital communication, collaboration, and therapeutic interventions.

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 563076722