Differentiation of dispositions toward ridicule and being laughed at in their relationships to self-reported eye contact aversion

Abstract

Abstract This investigation examines the associations of three dispositions toward ridicule and being laughed at with individuals’ self-reported aversion to making eye contact (EC) across different interpersonal scenarios. Data were obtained in a sample of 226 adults (53.5% women). Our results showed that the fear of being laughed at (gelotophobia) and the joy in laughing at others (katagelasticism) were positively associated with the presence of subjective experiences of EC aversion in both routine (RS) and socially threatening situations (STS). By contrast, the joy in being laughed at (gelotophilia) was unrelated to these mutual gaze-related behaviors. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that gelotophobia gave the best prediction of EC aversion regardless of the type of interpersonal situation (9–23% explained variance) after controlling for the influence of sociodemographics (effect sizes for STS > RS). Katagelasticism did not yield incremental variance in the prediction of any of these EC-related dimensions (<1%), which suggests that its prior correlations emerged due to overlapping variance with gelotophobia. Complementary further analyses revealed a significant interaction between gelotophobia (as a group factor) and the type of interpersonal situation on EC aversion. This revealed that whereas EC aversion in STS would increase as gelotophobia increases, solely gelotophobes—but not medium or lower scorers in gelotophobia—showed difficulties in maintaining EC effectively in RS. Implications of these findings are discussed in relation to the previous literature on EC, social behaviors, and laughter-related dispositions.