[BrandoElFollito]

The eye contact thing is interesting. I hate to make eye contact because I concentrate better when not watching the other person. And then I remember I should and it gets creepy because I am staring.

This is to say that everyone is slightly different and a healthy dose of tolerance goes a long way. After all, some of your behaviour is probably annoying to others and you do not even realize it.

[sandworm101]

I read a paper once about female celebs/models and eyesight. They tend to have poorer-than-average vision. The theory was than poor eyesight increased thier percieved eye contact with stangers. (They could not see the other person and so would not look away.) This made them more noticable by others, which is not a bad thing when trying to get jobs in entertainment. An other theory was that they needed to try harder to focus when talking to people at a distance, say at a casting call, resulting in more eye contact.

Also, at extreem low body fat you start to loose the pad of fat behind the eyes, resulting in that sunken look of many supermodels. This of course can reshape the back of the eye and impact vision.

[BrandoElFollito]

I am short-sighted and when I take off my glasses, I can look at the other person because everything is blurry and I can concentrate better.

A French actor (Christophe Lambert) has a special expression when he looks at the camera. It is because he is short-sighted and does not look exactly in the typical spot other would look at. He could not use contact lenses so there was no way to change that. The people who fought with him in the Highlander series (with swords) said that it was always an adventure because he was not really sure where he was hitting.

[pengaru]

I'm the same way. Removing glasses is an excellent hack, but it also means I'm not making eye contact as I'm just looking at the person's general direction.

Earlier in my career during interviews I'd always tell the interviewer "I'm listening, keep talking, I just need to look at the floor or wall to concentrate or I get too distracted by your animated-ness" and this was in the days before autism entered the zeitgeist. Nobody cared or thought it was particularly odd as far as I could tell. We were accustomed to nerds who sat alone thinking at computers most of the time being quirky, and appreciated the need to concentrate (private offices with doors that close!).

But as I get older it's become more necessary to look at something else while listening to anyone tell me anything I intend to grok. And I'm pretty certain ~everyone now assumes I'm autistic because of it. Never been diagnosed as such.

My interpretation and internal modeling of things is highly visual and genuine visual input is a sort of noise that interferes with my mental reconstruction of what I'm hearing. I have no idea if that overlaps with autism.

[the_other]

My eyesight’s rubbish. I learn very little from looking at people’s eyes. I almost never remember eye colours. It just doesn’t register because I “don’t see it”.

I have to make a special effort to make eye contact, and when I do I feel like my “trying to see better” habits and postures make others uncomfortable. I’ve no idea what “normal eye contact” feels like.

I might also have some autism traits (I’m a coder, after all), so that feeds into it.. but even if I wasn’t coder/austistic, I’d be struggling in this domain.

I offer this as anecdata for your “everyone is different” suggestion.