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Control the research environment
Present faces, videos, social scenes, written information, or experimental tasks while precisely measuring how participants direct and shift their attention.
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Social psychology research
Eye tracking for social psychology research
Understand how people direct their attention and respond to the social world. Eye tracking provides objective gaze data, revealing what people notice, overlook, and how visual behavior changes across individuals and social situations, from controlled experiments to real-world interactions.
Why eye trackingUncover new perspectives on social behavior
Much of social behavior depends on information we take in visually. A facial expression, another person's gaze, the behavior of a group, or a subtle social cue can all influence what happens next.
Traditional methods such as behavioral measures, questionnaires, interviews, and observation capture important parts of that process. Eye tracking adds another layer by showing how participants visually explore the people, information, and environments around them.
Researchers can examine which social cues were viewed, when they were viewed, for how long, and in what sequence, and relate those patterns to behavioral, experimental, or self-report measures.
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In practiceFrom controlled studies to real interaction
Social psychology can take place in front of a screen, across a table, or in a room full of people. Eye tracking can adapt to those different research environments.
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Capture natural social interaction
Study gaze as people communicate, collaborate, and respond to others in more natural settings, revealing how visual attention unfolds during real interaction.
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Applications
ApplicationsExplore social psychology with eye tracking
Different research questions call for different approaches. Explore three areas where eye tracking can add objective measures of visual behavior to social psychology research.
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Social psychology research
Social interaction
Use eye tracking to study social interaction, including eye contact, mutual gaze, communication, cooperation, and group behavior in controlled and natural settings.
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Social psychology research
Social cognition and perception
Discover how eye tracking supports social cognition and perception research into faces, first impressions, stereotypes, prejudice, and socially relevant visual cues.
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Social psychology research
Social influence
Use eye tracking to study social influence, including conformity, social cues, group behavior, decision-making, and responses to social pressure.
ComparisonAdd another dimension to social research
Complement traditional research methods with objective gaze data to reveal what people notice, attend to, and respond to during social interactions.
Traditional methods
QuestionnairesCapture attitudes, perceptions, and self-reported responses.
Behavioral measuresMeasure choices, responses, and outcomes.
InterviewsExplore participants' experiences and reasoning.
ObservationDocuments visible behavior and social interaction.
Experimental measuresCompare responses across conditions, groups, or interventions.
Eye tracking adds
- Gaze location
Shows where participants direct their gaze.
Viewing timeMeasures how long different people, objects, or areas are viewed.
Visual sequenceShows the order in which social information is explored.
Visual avoidanceHelps identify information or regions that receive little or no gaze.
Changes across conditionsCompare visual behavior across conditions, groups, or social contexts.
Supporting the journey
Customer cases
Customer casesDiscover how researchers study human interaction
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Scientific publication
Eye-to-eye contact is infrequent but shapes our social behavior
During social interactions, eye gaze carries a wealth of information about our attention, intention, or psychological state. Researchers recorded the looking behavior in live interaction.
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Customer stories
Eye tracking sheds light on social anxiety
Studies show that people with social anxiety pay more attention to negative facial expressions. An eye tracking study confirmed this theory and revealed that training people to focus on positive stimuli can lead to a reduction in this bias.
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blog
Transforming autism social skills training with eye tracking
In the ever-evolving field of autism therapy, eye tracking technology is making a profound impact on how children engage and learn. Discover how BioStream Technologies is one of the pioneers driving this revolution.
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Customer stories
Eye tracking to evaluate social cognition and social learning across cultures
Researchers from University of Chicago used eye tracking to evaluate social attention in two different cultural populations, urban North American participants, and rural Yucatec Mayan participants.
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Webinars
Eye tracking reveals insight into infants social information processing skills
In this presentation, Dr. Sheila Krogh-Jespersen presents evidence showing the development of social competence as revealed from the combination of eye-tracking and behavioral studies.
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Customer stories
Eye tracking as a powerful tool for exploring decision-making processes
At Shanghai University SILC Business School, Associate Professor Li-Sheng He explores how people make decisions by studying how attention shapes the way they process visual information.
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Webinars
Influence of musical features and priming on visual perception
In this presentation, Dr. Jörg Mühlhans, shares his study that has investigated the influence of music on gaze behavior, as well as the visual information on musical perception by means of various manipulations.
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Customer stories
Eye tracking proves concept of emotion bias within varying cultural groups
Researchers from Freie Universität Berlin used eye tracking in a study that revealed the incidence of negativity biases among different cultures by testing reactions to facial expressions.
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Customer stories
Eye tracking applied in the context of an intercultural design workshop
To pave the way for self-reflection, encourage cultural awareness and promote an intercultural understanding, Professor Susanne P. Radtke led a group of design students to Indonesia to conduct an intercultural workshop.
Our products
Our productsEye tracking across social research settings
Study attention and behavior across different environments — from controlled screen-based experiments to natural interactions between people in real-world settings.
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Bring eye tracking into your research
Tell us about your research question and study environment. Our eye tracking experts can help you find the right approach for your study.
Resources & community
Resources & communityEverything you need to get started
Free training, open-source tools, and direct support, designed to get you from unboxing to publishable results as fast as possible.
Tobii Academy
Free online learning platform with structured courses covering every stage of eye tracking research, from fundamental concepts to advanced analysis techniques.
→ Eye tracking fundamentals and methodology
→ Experiment design best practices
→ Tobii Pro Lab software training
→ Data analysis and interpretation
→ Certification tracks
Open-source research tools
50+ community-curated tools, experiment scripts, and integration libraries across the full eye tracking workflow. PsychoPy, MATLAB, Python, LSL, and more.
Tobii Connect support portal
Knowledge base, firmware updates, troubleshooting guides, and direct support from Tobii's technical team. Your first stop for any hardware or software question.
→ Product setup and troubleshooting guides
→ Firmware and software downloads
→ Data quality methodology documentation
→ Direct ticket support for registered products
→ Sample projects and demo recordings