Scopophobia can cause you to avoid social situations, even small gatherings with people you know. If your symptoms become severe, the fear of being stared at could cause you to avoid ordinary face-to-face encounters like visiting the doctor, conferring with your child’s teacher, or using public transit.

If you are excessively worried about being scrutinized, it could limit your work life or dating life, and it could cause you to miss out on opportunities to travel or to further your education.

➖Avoiding eye contact — why it matters
In many animal species, direct eye contact signals aggression.With human beings, however, eye contact has many complex social meanings.

Eye contact can communicate that someone is giving you their full attention. It can show that it’s your turn to talk.It can reveal a wide range of emotions,especially when the expression in someone’s eyes is read in the context of their other facial features, their tone of voice, and their body language.

But if you have scopophobia, you may misinterpret eye contact and other facial cues.Researchers have explored how social anxiety affects people’s ability to accurately read where other people are looking and what their facial expressions might mean. Here are some of their findings:

▪️The “cone” of gaze perception: When someone is in your field of vision, it’s natural to take note of the general direction in which they are looking. Researchers have referred to this awareness as a “cone” of gaze perception. If you have social anxiety, your cone may be wider than average.

It may seem as though someone is looking directly at you when they are looking in your general direction — and if you have scopophobia, you may even feel you are being evaluated or judged. The unpleasant feeling of being stared can intensify if more than one person is in your field of vision.

▪️Threat perception: Multiple studies have shown that when people with social anxieties believe someone is looking at them,they experience the other person’s gaze as threatening. Fear centers in the brain are activated, especially when the other person’s facial expressions are perceived as either neutral or angry-looking.