why should I make eye contact when I talk?

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how do you know that's why you didn't get the job?

I just remembered another reason to make eye contact. Perhaps it could be interpreted as your reason 2 however.

There are cultures where people of lower status (servants, slaves) are never to make contact. For someone of a lower caste to make eye contact would be considered aggressively not accepting their lower rank in life.

In that instance, not making eye contact would automatically place oneself in that lower rank.

Electing to not make eye contact could be interpreted to be a bit like volunteering to be seen as a less of a human being.

this is how it is for me. if i look at the eys, i get nausea and vertigo and i cannot focus on the verbal output from the speaker.
it is too difficult.

i have worked out a way however, on focusing on "choppers." i have a very good knowledge of peoples' mouth structures as a result. i learned this later in life.

I either pick an eye or focus on the eye brows (a tactic my Deaf friends suggested because there are lots of body language expressed with the eye brows).

But I've also been told by a friend who became deafened as an adult and never found communication a problem because as a culturally Hearing but deafened person he felt he didn't have to pay attention to what anyone said.

He only had to pretend he was listening.
(That's a major difference between Deaf culture and Hearing culture. The Dears pride themselves about listening and the Hearings don't care as long as they get and opportunity to say what they want to say.)

He said people who could still hear didn't care if people actually listened. They were more in love with what they themselves were saying.
Eye contact was just a thing to do so as to not marginalize each other's wise words even though nobody was listening to each other anyway.