Speis

I was watching this BBC documentary about how the brain works. They were explaining a thing called 'gaze aversion'. We find it hard to think when we're looking at someone's face because we're too distracted to think straight. We're conditioned to examine faces for clues about what the other person is thinking. Now because the human face is one of the most complex reads, looking at one blanks out most of our other thought processes.

Try it out, ask someone a hard question, and watch them look away. It explains why people can't meet your eyes when they're lying to you, because they're thinking of a quick lie. The truth doesn't need think time.

I've beem experiencing a lot of gaze aversion recently. Pretty much every time I mention my dissertation topic to people. We may all be beatufiul and unique flowers but mention the idea of basing a college dissertation on computer game journalism and just about everyone's eyeballs glaze over in the same way. Maybe it needs a snappier title?