Eye-rolling is a gesture in which a person briefly turns their eyes upward, often in an arcing motion from one side to the other. In the Anglosphere, it has been identified as a passive-aggressive response to an undesirable situation or person. The gesture is used to disagree or dismiss or express contempt for the targeted person without physical contact. [1]
Eye-rolling has been present in literature since at least the 16th century, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. [2] William Shakespeare periodically would use the gesture in his works to portray lust or passion for another character, as used in his poem The Rape of Lucrece . [1] [3] In his time, eye-rolling was used commonly as an expression of desire or flirtation, and it continued to be used in his way in literature for centuries. Up until about the 1950s this same meaning was used in music and films, but began translating to the meaning known today. The widespread use of eye-rolling in a negative connotation wasn't present until the 1980s. [4]
The facial expression is one of the most common forms of non-verbal communication among humans. [5] [4] When studying exclusively adolescent females, the eye-roll gesture was observed to be the most prominent response to displeasure. Thirteen-year-old girls showed eye-rolling to be the main sign of aggression toward their peers in social situations. Eye-rolling is often accompanied by crossing of the arms and throwing the head or body back in an increased effort to symbolize avoidance or displeasure. Avoidance may be characterized by conveying hostility or distancing, often with the purpose of ending a relationship of any kind. [6]
A study conducted by John Gottman states that contemptuous behavior like eye-rolling is the top factor of predicting divorce, followed by criticism, defensiveness, and stonewalling. [7] The gesture shows the other party that what they are doing is so undesirable that it is not even worth looking at or giving a thought, which is why many relationships are destroyed by excessive use of the action.
In 2010, members of the city council of Elmhurst, Illinois, wished to make a law outlawing eye-rolling. [8]
In 2018, a Chinese journalist's eye-rolling became international news. She rolled her eyes while exasperated by another journalist's excessive obsequiousness towards a government official, and got censored as a result, with CNN reporting rumors that her press credentials were revoked because of the eye-rolling. [9]
There has been much speculation about the hypothesis that eye-rolling is an evolutionary trait of women, which would explain why it is performed more by females than their male counterparts. Psychologists suggest that it was developed as "a low-risk way to express aggression and disapproval". Women in the past were more motivated to use survival tactics that did not involve physical violence in conflict including cut-eye, or side-eye, likely related to maternal instincts. [10] [11] The action of looking away in rejection or disapproval has been traced to many different cultures, who use eye-rolling for similar purposes, suggesting that it is a somewhat innate reaction to unpleasant stimuli. [12]
A Face with Rolling Eyes 🙄 was added to Unicode 8.0 in 2015 as U+1F644.
Anger, also known as wrath or rage, is an intense emotional state involving a strong uncomfortable and non-cooperative response to a perceived provocation, hurt or threat.
Body language is a type of communication in which physical behaviors, as opposed to words, are used to express or convey information. Such behavior includes facial expressions, body posture, gestures, eye movement, touch and the use of space. The term body language is usually applied in regard to people but may also be applied to animals. The study of body language is also known as kinesics. Although body language is an important part of communication, most of it happens without conscious awareness.
Paul Ekman is an American psychologist and professor emeritus at the University of California, San Francisco who is a pioneer in the study of emotions and their relation to facial expressions. He was ranked 59th out of the 100 most cited psychologists of the twentieth century. Ekman conducted seminal research on the specific biological correlations of specific emotions, attempting to demonstrate the universality and discreteness of emotions in a Darwinian approach.
Nonverbal communication (NVC) is the transmission of messages or signals through a nonverbal platform such as eye contact, facial expressions, gestures, posture, use of objects and body language. It includes the use of social cues, kinesics, distance (proxemics) and physical environments/appearance, of voice (paralanguage) and of touch (haptics). A signal has three different parts to it, including the basic signal, what the signal is trying to convey, and how it is interpreted. These signals that are transmitted to the receiver depend highly on the knowledge and empathy that this individual has. It can also include the use of time (chronemics) and eye contact and the actions of looking while talking and listening, frequency of glances, patterns of fixation, pupil dilation, and blink rate (oculesics).
Unconsciouscommunication is the subtle, unintentional, unconscious cues that provide information to another individual. It can be verbal or it can be nonverbal. Some psychologists instead use the term honest signals because such cues are involuntary behaviors that often convey emotion whereas body language can be controlled. Many decisions are based on unconscious communication, which is interpreted and created in the right hemisphere of the brain. The right hemisphere is dominant in perceiving and expressing body language, facial expressions, verbal cues, and other indications that have to do with emotion but it does not exclusively deal with the unconscious.
Silent treatment is the refusal to communicate verbally and electronically with someone who is trying to communicate and elicit a response. It may range from just sulking to malevolent abusive controlling behaviour. It may be a passive-aggressive form of emotional abuse in which displeasure, disapproval and contempt is exhibited through nonverbal gestures while maintaining verbal silence. Clinical psychologist Harriet Braiker identifies it as a form of manipulative punishment. It may be used as a form of social rejection; according to the social psychologist Kipling Williams, it is the most common form of ostracism.
Contempt is an attitude towards individuals, social groups and eventually ideologies, that evokes a sense of superiority and the right to judge, amid feelings of disgust and anger. This set of emotions generally produces maladaptive behaviour. Other authors define contempt as a negative emotion rather than the constellation of mentality and feelings that produce an attitude. Paul Ekman categorises contempt as the seventh basic emotion, along with anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness and surprise. Robert C. Solomon places contempt on the same emotional continuum as resentment and anger, and he argues that the differences between the three are that resentment is anger directed towards a higher-status individual; anger is directed towards an equal-status individual; and contempt is anger directed towards a lower-status individual.
Eye contact occurs when two people look at each other's eyes at the same time. In humans, eye contact is a form of nonverbal communication and can have a large influence on social behavior. Coined in the early to mid-1960s, the term came from the West to often define the act as a meaningful and important sign of confidence and respect. The customs, meaning, and significance of eye contact can vary greatly between societies, neurotypes, and religions.
Passive-aggressive behavior is characterized by a pattern of passive hostility and an avoidance of direct communication. Inaction where some action is socially customary is a typical passive-aggressive strategy. Such behavior is sometimes protested by associates, evoking exasperation or confusion. People who are recipients of passive-aggressive behavior may experience anxiety due to the discordance between what they perceive and what the perpetrator is saying.
A nod of the head is a gesture in which the head is tilted in alternating up and down arcs along the sagittal plane. In many cultures, it is most commonly, but not universally, used to indicate agreement, acceptance, or acknowledgement.
Social behavior is behavior among two or more organisms within the same species, and encompasses any behavior in which one member affects the other. This is due to an interaction among those members. Social behavior can be seen as similar to an exchange of goods, with the expectation that when you give, you will receive the same. This behavior can be affected by both the qualities of the individual and the environmental (situational) factors. Therefore, social behavior arises as a result of an interaction between the two—the organism and its environment. This means that, in regards to humans, social behavior can be determined by both the individual characteristics of the person, and the situation they are in.
Oculesics, a subcategory of kinesics, is the study of eye movement, behavior, gaze, and eye-related nonverbal communication. The specific definition varies depending on whether it applies to the fields of medicine or social science.
Staring is a prolonged gaze or fixed look. In staring, one object or person is the continual focus of visual interest, for an amount of time. Staring can be interpreted as being either hostile like disapproval of another's behavior, or the result of intense concentration, interest or affection. Staring behavior can be considered as a form of aggression like when it is an invasion of an individual's privacy in certain contexts, or as a nonverbal cue to convey feelings of attraction in a social setting. The resultant behavior or action defines whether it is aggressive in nature, passive or active expression of attraction, etc. However, to some extent staring often occurs accidentally, and often a person would be simply staring into a space for awareness, or could be lost in thought, stupefied, or be unable to see. As such, the meaning of a person's staring behavior depends upon the attributions made by the observer.
Social perception is the study of how people form impressions of and make inferences about other people as sovereign personalities. Social perception refers to identifying and utilizing social cues to make judgments about social roles, rules, relationships, context, or the characteristics of others. This domain also includes social knowledge, which refers to one's knowledge of social roles, norms, and schemas surrounding social situations and interactions. People learn about others' feelings and emotions by picking up information they gather from physical appearance, verbal, and nonverbal communication. Facial expressions, tone of voice, hand gestures, and body position or movement are a few examples of ways people communicate without words. A real-world example of social perception is understanding that others disagree with what one said when one sees them roll their eyes. There are four main components of social perception: observation, attribution, integration, and confirmation.
Communicative behaviors are psychological constructs that influence individual differences in expressing feelings, needs, and thoughts as a substitute for more direct and open communication. More specifically, communicative behaviors refer to people's tendency to express themselves using indirect messages. Much of our communication is, in fact, non-verbal.
Cognitive valence theory (CVT) is a theoretical framework that describes and explains the process of intimacy exchange within a dyad relationship. Peter A. Andersen, PhD created the cognitive valence theory to answer questions regarding intimacy relationships among colleagues, close friends and intimate friends, married couples and family members. Intimacy or immediacy behavior is that behavior that provides closeness or distance within a dyad relationship. Closeness projects a positive feeling in a relationship, and distance projects a negative feeling within a relationship. Intimacy or immediacy behavior can be negatively valenced or positively valenced. Valence, associated with physics, is used here to describe the degree of negativity or positivity in expected information. If your partner perceives your actions as negative, then the interaction may repel your partner away from you. If your partner perceives your actions as positive, then the interaction may be accepted and may encourage closeness. Affection and intimacy promotes positive valence in a relationship. CVT uses non-verbal and verbal communications criteria to analyze behavioral situations.
Affiliative conflict theory (ACT) is a social psychological approach that encompasses interpersonal communication and has a background in nonverbal communication. This theory postulates that "people have competing needs or desires for intimacy and autonomy". In any relationship, people will negotiate and try to rationalize why they are acting the way they are in order to maintain a comfortable level of intimacy.
Cut-eye is a visual gesture using one's eyes and face to communicate displeasure or disapproval, and in some case hostility. The gesture is usually performed by looking at someone out of the corners of one's eyes, then turning the eyes away quickly down towards the foot opposite the eye of the person the gesture is being performed at. The main focus of this gesture is the "cut" of the eyes, and can be performed by moving them in one direction or several sharp up and down movements, meant to convey a feeling of anger or disapproval. This gesture has evolved into popular culture and has taken on new monikers while remaining similar to the original African gesture. The cut-eye gesture now is also identified with: stink-eye, evil-look, eye-roll, or death stare. The gesture also is similar in nature to the evil-eye gesture of the Christian and Islamic theologies.
The Cascade Model of Relational Dissolution is a relational communications theory that proposes four critically negative behaviors that lead to the breakdown of marital and romantic relationships. The model is the work of psychological researcher John Gottman, a professor at the University of Washington and founder of The Gottman Institute, and his research partner, Robert W. Levenson. This theory focuses on the negative influence of verbal and nonverbal communication habits on marriages and other relationships. Gottman's model uses a metaphor that compares the four negative communication styles that lead to a relationship's breakdown to the biblical Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, wherein each behavior, or horseman, compounds the problems of the previous one, leading to total breakdown of communication.
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