Cultural Protocols Around Eye Contact

Sustained eye contact reads as attentive and respectful in some cultural contexts and as confrontational or disrespectful in others, and an interviewer unaware of this variation risks misreading a subject's behaviour, or worse, unintentionally causing genuine discomfort through an entirely well meant gesture. A well meant gesture can still land badly if the underlying cultural expectation is not understood.

Preparation helps here, particularly when working across a cultural context different from one's own, but genuine attentiveness in the moment matters just as much: noticing a subject's visible discomfort and adjusting rather than continuing a habit that clearly is not serving the conversation well. That noticing matters more than any general rule memorised beforehand from a guide.

The underlying principle extends beyond eye contact specifically: many small behavioural norms an interviewer takes for granted are not universal, and genuine cultural humility means holding those norms loosely rather than assuming they apply everywhere equally. Holding assumptions loosely tends to serve an interviewer better than confident but mistaken certainty.