[Regarding the post about staring, t]here was some speculation about why people might stare at the person most likely to take offense by someone else’s remark. Notably, nobody mentioned a reason that seems intuitive to me. Namely, I think human beings are frequently watchful for potentially dangerous or violent situations. If there is a chance that there might be violence, we like to know about it sooner rather than later. And when one person insults someone else, I think our instinct is to look at the insulted person to see if the situation might become physically dangerous or threatening.

. . . .[That wouldn't] explicitly explain why people would stare at the offended person, even when there is no actual danger, such as when the offense takes place on television and the offended person is only on a screen. My response would be that our staring is not a conscious effort to assess danger. Even though we might rationally know that we’re not in any danger when we watch the confrontation on a television screen, we’re hardwired to watch people’s reactions to an offensive remark as a form of self-protection. After all, we evolved when offensive gestures, actions, or comments would have occurred a short distance away, not on television.

One way to test whether I’m right about the concern for physical safety is to run the television experiment again, but in one version of the experiment, the experimenter tries to distract the subject from watching the t.v. when the offensive remark happens, such as by calling the subject’s name. In another version of the experiment, subjects could be placed in the same room as where the offensive remarks occur. My hunch would that the subject would be less likely to turn away from the scene when it is taking place in the same room (i.e., in person). That is, the person will register a greater risk of a physical altercation and would be less likely to look away when his/her name is called under those circumstances than when the scene is unfolding on a screen. Of course, there might be other reasons for the reluctance to turn away (e.g., an in-person portrayal is inherently more compelling), but a physical safety consideration would seem to be at least a partial explanation.