Staring and Participants' Sex: Physiological and Subjective Reactions

A 2X2X2 ANOVA design laboratory experiment was conducted with 123 college students in which male and female confederates stared or did not look at male and female subjects. Using changes in the number of skin conductance deflections as the measure of arousal, stare subjects were more aroused in the presence of an opposite-sex confederate. There was no sex X stare condition interaction. Stare subjects rated themselves more angry, unfriendly, unpleasant and embarrassed, while stare condition confederates were rated as more tense, angry, embarrassed, passive and less intelligent.