Avoiding eye-contact is typically one of the symptoms mentioned when talking about ASD. In fact, when I learned in high school about autism, I thought I might have autism, because of that trait of mine. Since early childhood making direct eye-contact with people has made me feel uncomfortable. I soon abandoned my hypothesis that I had autism because I had few other signs of autism: no stimming, no speech or communication problems, and pretty much my only physical hypersensitivity was for noise. Plus, I was hyper-empathetic, and autistic people at that time were supposed to feel no empathy (which we now know isn't true).
Not only autistic people hate eye contact, but most IN types (in MBTI) also do.
I am INFP /INTP and I have always felt uneasy with eye contact. So are my INTJ and INFP sons. In fact, I have always felt sorry for them when their kindergarten teacher forced them to make eye contact in the morning when arriving and afternoon when leaving. It was the most unnatural thing for them to do. Even if the scene always looked a bit funny, I could avoid feel their pain.
In my own high school, my INFJ Greek teacher never looked us students in the eyes either - a fact that made him more likeable to me.
Why? It will sound crazy, but I think it is a remnant of our hunter-gatherer past. Hunter-gatherers were more egalitarian and trusting (higher in oxytocin). Eye gaze was probably a farmer “Invention”, it is like “checking out the intentions of that person, or if he/she is lying)… a sign of distrust initially.
I have found some highly interesting facts that undermine my hypothesis (or at least should make it clear that is isn't total hogwash):
This is the same behaviour autistic people display when among themselves vs neurotypicals, the same behaviour when IN people are among Ns vs a mixed group with S people. (NB Aka are hunter-gatherers, Bantu farmers). This behaviour perfectly describes how my two sons behave in school and at home.
Jean-Paul Satre (INTP) wrote extensively about “Le regard” (the gaze”, which he felt made him feel suspiciously observed by others and unable to do anything.
Read more about hunter-gatherer minds here:
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