Steve L. Ellyson's research while affiliated with Youngstown State University and other places

... For example, when a person is anxious or of low hierarchical status compared with others nearby, the person may stand in a characteristic way that resembles the startle posture. We are all familiar with the common, servile cringe: the shoulders raised slightly around the neck, the arms and hands drawn in around the abdomen or chest, the torso curved forward slightly (Darwin, 1872;Ellyson & Dovidio, 1985;Hall et al., 2005). In contrast, when a person is confident or communicating high hierarchical status, the exact inversion of the defensive posture appears: the head is held upright, in particular the shoulders are down, exposing the neck, the back is straight, the chest is out, the arms are at the sides or even spread expansively. ...

... Key avenues for future research involve examining followers' behavioral responses to the direct gaze of prestigious or dominant leaders, as well as their corresponding physiological states and emotions. First, theory predicts that subordinates in a dominance hierarchy will readily avert their gaze when attended to by dominant leaders, as part of their characteristic submissive display (Dovidio & Ellyson, 1985;Ellyson et al., 1992). Dominant leaders themselves, who are keen to assert their coercive capacity and instill a sense of fear and threat, will continue to gaze directly at subordinates until they are cowed into submission. ...

... From this we can infer an important distinction between two types of experiences, namely to be passively seen-by-another and to actively look-at-another, which both involve the specific personal I-Thou stance. This dual function of eye gaze has also been empirically explored since the 1960s, in relation to various phenomena such as intimacy and dominance (Argyle and Cook, 1976;Ellyson et al., 1981;Jarick and Kingstone, 2015) or turn-taking behavior during conversation (Kendon, 1967;Ho et al., 2015). In the latter, looking at the other and being looked at by the other take place in that speakers change between averting their gaze and turning it toward the listener, while listeners gazed at speakers most of the time (Kendon, 1967). ...

... To test the gaze camouflage hypothesis we asked whether species with greater canine size sexual dimorphism (as a proxy of intraspecific male aggression 32 ) had less irido-conjunctival contrast. Male intrasexual competition is a context in which we expect eye contact to be used as a means of establishing dominance 33,34 . We found no relationship between canine size dimorphism and irido-conjunctival contrast with a PGLS (β = 0.96, SE = 0.62, t = 1.55, p = 0.13, n = 52), suggesting that irido-conjunctival contrast is not related to ocular signalling in agonistic contexts. ...

... First, gaze avoidance is commonly interpreted to demonstrate deference, with a lower-status individual avoiding the gaze of a higher-status individual (e.g., Brown et al., 1987;De Kadt, 1995;Keltner et al., 1997). Accordingly, averted gaze is often a required symbol of respect from a person of lower social status in an interaction (e.g., Ellyson & Dovidio, 1985), whereas a person of higher social status may look more directly at their interlocutor, and look for longer stretches of time (Dovidio & Ellyson, 1982;Snyder & Sutker, 1977). Second, gaze on the face can be interpreted as a sign of attentiveness. ...

... First, gaze avoidance is commonly interpreted to demonstrate deference, with a lower-status individual avoiding the gaze of a higher-status individual (e.g., Brown et al., 1987;De Kadt, 1995;Keltner et al., 1997). Accordingly, averted gaze is often a required symbol of respect from a person of lower social status in an interaction (e.g., Ellyson & Dovidio, 1985), whereas a person of higher social status may look more directly at their interlocutor, and look for longer stretches of time (Dovidio & Ellyson, 1982;Snyder & Sutker, 1977). Second, gaze on the face can be interpreted as a sign of attentiveness. ...

... Finally, positive intergroup relations can be promoted by group-based anger. (Fischer & Manstead, 2015, p. 14) More specifically, there are social affordances that reflect one's position in the social hierarchy; these include gaze, head angle, and smiling during listening (Ashenfelter et al., 2009;Cashdan, 1998;Ellyson et al., 1980;Mignault & Chaudhuri, 2003). Responses to such proxemic bodily cues are approach and avoid behaviors correlated with autonomic responses (Dovidio et al., 1988;McCall et al., 2009). ...

... Numerous other studies on gaze in everyday decision-making collaborative contexts similarly reveal that leaders attend less to others (Argyle & Ingham, 1972;Argyle et al., 1974;Breton et al., 2018;Exline et al., 1965;Exline et al., 1975;Dovidio & Ellyson, 1982;Hung et al., 2008;Sanchez-Cortes et al., 2013). ...

... In the first step, 40 homogeneous upper-intermediate students were chosen from Islamic Azad University of Abadan, Iran and assigned into two equal groups, namely a male group and a female group. According to Brown, Dovido, and Ellyson (1990), males and females' language may be affected by the chosen topics. To tackle with the previously mentioned problem, 15 topics were given to another student sample doing their fifth semester to put the topics in rank regarding the degree to which they can be considered as gender-biased topics. ...

... In contrast, using small gestures and occupying a smaller space creates rather submissive impressions [3,20,39,41]. Apart from bodily expansion [20], dominance can for example be expressed by physical closeness [20], and eye contact, particularly while speaking [13]. Similarly, for IVAs, large vs. small gestures [17], eye contact during speaking [22], and an upright vs. tilted head position [5] increase perceived dominance. ...