Shyness level and sensitivity to gaze from agents - are shy people sensitive to agent’s gaze?

Abstract

This paper reports how shy people perceive different amount of gaze from a virtual agent and how their perception of the gaze affects comfortableness of the interaction. Our preliminary results indicate shy people are sensitive to even a very low amounts of gaze from the agent. However, contrary to our expectations, as the amounts of gaze from the agent increases, shy people had more favorable impression toward the agent, and they did not perceive the adequate amount of gaze as most comfortable.