What You Need To Know About Eye Contact: 10 Facts That’ll Help You See Eye-To-Eye
This is part two of an article on Eye Contact. To read part one, please click here.
Six: If they’re displaying markers of discomfort, you’re making them feel uncomfortable. If you’re displaying these markers yourself, you’re making them feel uncomfortable.

Our eyes are excellent communicators of feelings, as well as indicators of comfort and discomfort. Paying attention to these markers helps us decipher others from a very young age. Here are some common indicators of discomfort:

A high blink rate indicates discomfort or tension, though in some rare circumstances it indicates arousal.
Darting eyes also indicates discomfort or tension. In some circumstances, the person is quite literally ‘looking for a way out.’ This does not necessarily mean that they are being dishonest, merely that they are finding a solution or an answer.
Shielding your eyes is a clear indicator of discomfort. It implies you cannot bear to look at whatever it is you’re shielding yourself from.

It is important to note though each of these markers on their own are not sufficient evidence of discomfort, however, when coupled with multiple markers or a change from the baseline of usual behavior, they can be used to established a person’s relative level of comfort or discomfort. As with any other non-verbal cue, showing these markers yourself (even subtly, as is the case with micro expressions) will make your conversational partner feel like you’re uncomfortable, a feeling he will quickly start mirroring.

Conversely, it is important to show as few signs of discomfort as possible if it is your goal to put your partner at ease. It is essential to train yourself to spot these markers in others, and to become aware of it when you’re displaying these markers yourself. That way, you can more readily correct your own behavior when necessary, leading to a much more comfortable conversational atmosphere for both you and whoever you’re talking to.

Key Takeaways:

Signs of discomfort: Shielding eyes, darting eyes, increased blinking frequency. Memorize them, learn to spot them, aim to eliminate them where possible.
Avoid showing these markers yourself; or, implement them to give off an air of discomfort, either to instill a feeling of discomfort or doubt in someone else, or to get them to empathize with your discomfort.
As per the recommendation in part one of this article, practice eye-contact until maintaining eye-contact in and of itself is no longer a source of discomfort for you. Then, try to eliminate as many other sources of discomfort as possible. Remember that, as a general rule, appearing confident builds an air of confidence between people. 

Seven: Eye contact is NOT staring.

On average, people tend to look at each other anywhere from one to seven seconds before looking away. Additionally, on average, the speaker looks at the listener 40% of the time, while the listener looks at the speaker 60-70% of the time. A common exercise in courses dedicated to interpersonal skills – often followed by those preparing for a career in middle-management – to try and increase both these amounts by 10%. This is low enough to not come off as unusual, and high enough to create a noticeable difference in likability. Meaning, you should try to look at someone’s eyes 50-55% of the time when you’re the speaker, and 70%-80% when you’re the listener.

The golden rule for eye contact is as follows: To facilitate the building of rapport and likability you should strive to maintain as much eye contact as you can, as long as you feel comfortable doing so and without making the other person feel uncomfortable or threatened. To make that a bit more tangible: “Holding eye contact works best for 7 to 10 seconds in a one-on-one conversation, and for 3 to 5 seconds in a group setting,” according to Ben Decker, chief executive officer of Decker Communications, a San Francisco-based training and consulting firm.

While looking someone in the eyes more is generally a good thing, looking someone in the eye and never looking anywhere else is just plain creepy. Constant eye contact is threatening and uncomfortable for the other person. While being berated unfairly by your boss, for example, you’ll often show your disagreement by holding your gaze a bit longer than usual, as a subconscious act of defiance. Remember what we discussed earlier: Intimacy is good, unwanted intimacy is threatening and uncomfortable. When someone disagrees with you and they look you in the eye in a prolonged, direct manner, it gives you the feeling of someone trying to dominate you.

Key Takeaways:

A healthy level of eye contact can be kept easily by looking at someone for four to seven seconds, and then looking away briefly. As a speaker, this can be done easily as you naturally avert your gaze to formulate what you’re going to say next. So, to get that 55%, just do that a tad bit less, and make sure to be looking at someone whenever something important or noteworthy is being said or emphasized.
As a listener, it is also quite easy to maintain 90% eye-contact without creeping someone out. Whenever the speaker looks away, you can do the same. When they return to make eye-contact, you’ll do the same, your reaction naturally being a bit delayed. Occasionally, a slight tilting of your head, or a smile and a nod can further indicate that you’re interested in what he or she is saying, and give off the impression that you’re actively engaged in the conversation, rather than staring them down.
Remember the golden rule: Make as much eye contact as you can, without causing discomfort to the other person, and, more importantly, yourself.
Though out of the scope of this article, make sure to keep your gaze warm and passionate, or enthused, and not cold. An empty gaze comes off as eerie and terrifying. Some basic tips: Let your eyes speak by moving them around, and involve your eyebrows to emote surprise or interest or seriousness. Having wrinkles around the eyes, which you’ll usually see accompany a sincere smile, is a classic indicators of warmth. With practice you can elicit this look at any time, simply by imagining cheerful moments or thoughts that make you resonate cheer. Here’s an easy way to do just that.

Eight: Dilated pupils indicate interest and attraction. They also elicit interest and feelings of attraction. This is due to mirroring and reciprocity.

Pupil size is very important in attraction. If they dilate (grow larger), this is a sure-fire sign of attraction. If they constrict (grow smaller), that usually indicates disinterest or, in other cases, anger. Generally, if you are experiencing anger or other discomforting emotions, your pupils will shrink in size (fear is an exception to this rule). Reading someone eyes and noticing their pupil size gives you some of the most reliable information about what’s really going on inside their head, because pupils – much like other non-verbals cues – work independently of conscious control.

Try to imagine how the following facial expressions would look: sad eyes, happy eyes, angry eyes, piercing eyes, and bedroom eyes (meaning eyes that suggest we are sexually aroused, not tired). Next, find yourself a mirror and study your own reflection as you try to recreate those emotions. As you’ll notice, each expression has a distinct ‘look’ to them. Learn to notice these, and you’ll be able to tell a lot more about what another person is feeling, sometimes more than they are aware of themselves.

Wider pupils indicate excitement (which general implies attraction, though it can mean fear, among other things), and so your eyes (and you) will be more attractive as your pupils grow larger. Any positive thought can serve to dilate your pupils, so think of something that excites you, or think of a person that you love, or simply use your anchor if you have one. In one study, Eckhard Hess showed men two sets of images of women. In the first set, the pupils of each woman were enlarged. In the second one, the pupils of each woman had been made smaller. As a result, men generally preferred the photos of the women with enlarged pupils (i.e. found them more attractive), however none of the participants could themselves explain what made the difference.

This has been since been confirmed in multiple other studies, and it is very interesting to speculate on what precisely this implies. Perhaps this is the reason why romantic encounters generally succeed more often in dimly lit places – because pupils naturally dilate in those lighting conditions. Candlelight dinners are an example of this, and they tend to make us attracted to our dates much more than dinner dates in a bright-lit room, supposedly because there we are physiologically compelled to dilate our pupils (as it is much harder to see anything in the dark).

Of course, many other things weigh in there – just the idea of a candlelight dinner being a romantic notion will make it more attractive and effective to some, and similarly, some people might still hate candlelight dinners, even if they do still make their dates more attractive than other scenarios they dislike. Without doubt, however, dilated pupils facilitate the creation of human bonds of attraction. They also make a person more attractive. One of the reasons for this is mirroring and reciprocity. If someone has larger eyes, which signify interest, we will subconsciously become flattered as a possible subject of that interest. They strive to ‘let in’ as much of you as possible, and that is always a compliment.

Keep in mind, however, that some people may not respond well to that show of interest, such as some people that have low self-esteem, or people that have a low esteem of you. That is to say: Some people may not appreciate the compliment.

Key Takeaways:

Dilated pupils signify excitement and interest. They also facilitate attraction and human bonding. In summary, people with dilated pupils seem more interested, and they are more interesting and attractive than those with regular-sized or constricted pupils.
Try to notice it when a person’s pupils change size significantly. This usually indicates either increased or decreased interest and excitement, which makes you tell how involved and interested the other person is in your interaction, even when they might be consciously trying to deceive you into believing otherwise. Keep in mind, however, that there are many other reasons ones pupils could dilate or constrict, first and foremost a change in lighting.
Make some effort to get your pupils to dilate. This can mean drinking caffeine, or doing exercise, or imagining something that gets you excited – all little things will help. Most importantly, practice and apply the art of sincere interest, because nothing helps looking interested and excited more than actually being interested and excited.

Nine: Shielding the eyes (like with crying), can imply a (brutal) rejection of the speaker or whatever else appears to trigger it.

Turning away to avoid looking at something is an indication that you want to escape whatever it is that you are shielding yourself from. Eye blocking behaviors such as covering of the eyes, shielding the eyes, lowering the eyelids (for a prolonged period of time), and even slight delays in opening of the eyes are all behavioral responses that are so hard wired in us that even children who are born blind will cover their eyes, when they hear something they don’t like. This is a primal adaptation to combat stress and extended exposure to negative stimuli, which has served us quite well over numerous generations.

For this reason, and the implied lack of attention accompanying evasion of eye contact discussed in part one of this article, it is very easy for someone to get offended by a person averting their gaze, as that seems to imply they are trying to get away or block out them out. And again, this can happen without the intent or the desire of becoming offended, or even that person believing they have just cause for doing so. It takes only one or a few subconscious misinterpretations of such signals to create a stressful and tense atmosphere in your conversation.

And, since many people feel they are becoming offended without a reason, finding themselves judging others unfairly, or not even consciously notice that they are becoming offended or agitated, they have ample reason to not want to speak out and let you know about it. This is exactly why ‘Can’t you just correct that when he/she brings it up – no normal person would still be mad after that.’ is not a valid argument in dismissing this problem. As you know, people often don’t know how they feel or why they that way. So, don’t complicate things, and avert your gaze as little as possible.

It should be noted that wearing sunglasses, while not on its own indicative of anything, can be a confidence boost to the wearer, for two reasons:

Firstly, when someone isn’t comfortable with maintaining eye contact with another person, they can avert their gaze without the other person knowing.
Secondly, they can hide all of their own eyes’ markers of discomfort, as well as many other facial markers that allow other people to determine what emotion they’re feeling.

Of course, though wearing sunglasses can help in this way, it can also complicate a lot of things and diminish the success of your own efforts to communicate well with and persuade someone.

Key Takeaways:

Shielding the eyes can be interpreted an implied rejection and blocking out of whatever is being discussed or witnessed, or whoever is being talked to. Try to avoid it, like any other marker of discomfort.
If you notice someone becoming agitated for whatever reason, try to find out why! Ask them! Don’t let agitation ferment and get worse!
Since sunglasses and some garments hide communication signals, it can both be easier and harder to be intimidating or persuasive wearing them.

Ten: There are a lot of misconceptions regarding eye contact and lying.

The rebuttal of the first misconception regarding deception is probably mentioned more times on the internet than the actual myth: People who are lying do not make less eye contact than honest people. In fact, people who are lying will usually tend to look at the person they’re lying to more. There are at least two reasons for this:

They are aware of this myth, and will keep making eye contact to appear more honest.
They want to look at the person to see if the deception is working. When it does, they will often smirk in a very typical way (which will be covered in the course on lying and lie-spotting), or subtly breathe a sigh of relief, which is also accompanied by the eyelids lowering slightly and their eye muscles becoming less strained.

Of course, conversely, extended eye contact is only a possible marker of deception, and can mean other things. And, even if you could establish that you’re being deceived, it’ll be useless unless you find out why. The second misconception: Eyes moving side to side or to any particular corner of the eyes tells you whether or not a person is fabricating information, i.e. creating a lie. This is not true! It only means that a person is either processing or recollecting or creating information. This can mean anything and nothing!

For example, when someone asks you to tell them a story about a holiday you just took, you will often look in the direction that you naturally look when recollecting information (which differs from person to person as well). Now assume that, before you start telling a story about something that happened to you at some pool, you now look into the direction you typically look when creating information. Does this mean you must be lying, because you’re inventing information?

Of course not! Not necessarily, anyway. For instance, you might be creating a part of the memory that you cannot recall (like the spatial blueprint of that specific pool the story is about) so that you can summon other associated memories and then correct that initial blueprint. Or, even simpler, you might just be thinking of where you want to start telling your story, which is also an act of creation!

The third misconception: Liars blink more often, or conversely, liars blink less often. Both are assumed for different reasons, but both are wrong. It’s true that people blink more when under pressure, and yes, it’s also true that liars maintain extended eye-contact with less interruptions in the form of blinking. But specifically, according to the Journal of Non-Verbal Behavior, and reported by The Telegraph: “Liars blink less frequently during the lie, and then speed up to around eight times faster than usual afterwards.”

So, it’s important to remember: No matter how we perceive the meaning of excessive blinking, the opposite may actually be true. As with all of lying and lie-spotting, establishing baselines of behavior and noticing changes in that baseline might help you spot deception, but it never tells you the why behind the deception, or even what the deception is. People might feel they are deceiving you by omitting a detail that might not even be relevant to you. Conversely, a person might not feel like he is deceiving you and not give away any signals of deception even if what he’s saying is clearly untrue.

Key Takeaways:

Liars tend to look at you more while lying, they will blink less while lying and more directly after, and looking in any particular direction tells you nothing about what a person is thinking.
Though it’s good to be able to read signs of deception and avoid giving away them yourself, don’t rely on them too heavily, as knowing the what and why is more important than the whether.

Recap, Part Two

Six: Remember the markers of discomfort and learn to spot them in others and yourself. Learn how to interpret them, how to eliminate them, and how to utilize them to your own benefit and the benefit of the person you’re talking to.
Seven: Understand and appreciate the difference between eye-contact and staring. Take the Golden Rule of Eye Contact to heart: Make as much eye contact as you can, without causing discomfort to the both other person and yourself.
Eight: Dilated pupils indicate and elicit interest and attraction, and constricted pupils indicate and elicit the lack thereof. Use reciprocity to your advantage and make sure you have a reliable way of dilating your pupils. Always try to be genuinely interested in the other person, as interest is really hard to fake.
Nine: Be aware of the implications of shielding your eyes, and be sure to give off that consciously rather than subconsciously, and use it only when appropriate. Be attentive of the fact that such shielding in someone means rejection, but don’t assume that it is necessarily aimed at you. When it is, make an effort to change the behavior causing that rejection.
Ten: Markers of deception and discomfort are only there to serve as considerations in planning what you should be doing next. They are not be-all-end-all’s of communication, and you should never assume them to be any more than speculative. Use them to point you in the right direction, don’t let them decide the path you take.

Two other things to keep in mind:

Every key takeaway listed here, like everything else in the area of social skills and social engineering, is a principle to be applied, not part of a step-by-step guide to communication. They depend on context and are meant as general guidelines. They are not fool-proof and take practice to apply correctly, and only a fool would think that the entirety of human communication can be boiled down to a few lines on a piece of paper or an article on a website. Apply without hesitation, learn, adapt, then master!
Many things in human psychology, and social interaction in particular, are not so much about the actual why’s of certain markers and principles, but more about what people perceive to be the why’s. Something can become more effective or completely ineffectual based entirely on what the target (i.e. the other person) believes.
For people who just want to become more socially skilled, use these principles to try and understand how someone else is feeling and how they feel about you, and then adjust your behavior whenever you’re making them uncomfortable. They are just a few ways to make small improvements to your likability. For the social engineer, the same applies broadly, but most of your interactions will be too short-lived to take into account such minor details. Take the route that is most generally effective. Apply all of these principles, adapt them whenever you find they’re not working. That’s all there is to it.

Thank you for reading part two of our article on eye contact. Look out for the supplementary article to this one, ‘Exercises for Good Eye Contact,’ coming soon. Please like our Facebook page or join our community on Reddit to be immediately notified when it gets released! See you there!
Thanks for reading, and  best of luck in becoming a better you!

What You Need To Know About Eye Contact: 10 Facts That’ll Help You See Eye-To-Eye
One: Eye contact is the single most important element of communication, and should be used abundantly and without hesitation.

Your eyes show your emotions and interest more than your words or other body language. We favor the eyes as indicators of someone’s true emotional state when their verbal or other non-verbal cues are incongruent, i.e. when they don’t match up with one another. When some communication cues tell a different story than the words we are saying, we trust non-verbals over intonation, and intonation over other speech elements.* More than half of the value of non-verbal cues is attributed to the eyes, meaning people will generally trust your eyes over any other verbal or non-verbal cue.

*A commonly quoted statistic is 55% body language, 38% tone of voice, 7% actual verbal content, where the percentage shows their importance relative to one another. Though this means tone of voice is more favored as an indicator over-all, tone of voice is easily consciously manipulated while the eyes in many instances are not. Enfin.

Even though nobody disputes the importance of eye contact, many people are wary of initiating eye contact, especially with strangers, usually due to the perceived risk of rejection. However, studies show that once one person initiates eye contact, the other person more often than not welcomes the engagement and reciprocates.

And, consider this: should a stranger outright reject you, i.e. purposely try to not look at you, this simply means that this person is not worth the time and the extra energy that you’d need to spend to get them engaged. After all, for each person rejecting social interaction, there are many more who will not. Unless you, for some reason, absolutely have to engage this particular person, there is no need to trouble yourself with worry and fear of rejection.

Keep in mind: Eye contact is an essential tool in building rapport, and a key component of human communication. It is a prerequisite for successful interpersonal bonding, and all social situations benefit from it in various ways. Eye contact involves the entire spectrum of human emotions. Additionally, it can signify attraction, confidence, acknowledgement, understanding and acceptance. Conversely, a lack of eye-contact can signify the exact opposite.

Key Takeaways:

Whenever you attempt to make eye contact with someone and they do not engage to make it mutual, that means it’s time to either change your course of action or find someone else who you can connect with.
Practice making eye contact with strangers to get comfortable with being noticed by and connecting with others. Initiate eye contact with every person you meet outdoors, preferably for as long as they are willing to reciprocate it – this will be hard at first, but become easier with practice. Try to be the one to initiate it, but not the one to break it.
Keep eye contact a friendly gesture, and let it indicate that you like what – or who – you see. You don’t need smile jovially, but just thinking a few upbeat thoughts will cause a wrinkling of the eyes that tells someone more about your mood and intentions than a thousand words in conversation ever could. Remember: Your eyes tell them how you really feel.

Two: Maintaining eye contact 90% of the time is a clear show of intimacy, and someone can even force feelings of intimacy in others by using the effects of reciprocation.

Lovers gazing into each other’s eyes over a candlelit dinner; best friends sharing their innermost feelings or discussing their mutual interests passionately; a swooning girl staring at her favorite rockstar as he introduces himself to her again, hoping to get a word out of a starstruck fan; and finally, an orator looking at his mesmerized audience, feeling as empowered as they feel inspired.

What all these scenario’s have common, and what separates them from most other social interactions, is that they describe situations in which a 90% rate of eye contact naturally occurs. In a study conducted in 1989, researchers found that mutual eye contact alone is a sufficient condition for creating feelings of intimacy, even when the two people are complete strangers to one another.

This feeling of connectedness is caused by the release of a neurochemical called phenylethylamine, which releases dopamine (involved in attention and reward systems in the brain) and adrenaline (involved in excitement and stress-response systems), and it is most notably involved in human bonding, and particularly being in love or infatuated. However, as you may already know, these same chemicals are also involved in more negative emotional reactions, and indeed, extended eye-contact (staring) might also intimidate other people or give rise to feelings of aggression.

Rather than fight-or-flight, maintaining eye contact 90% of the time causes an ‘approach or retreat’ response. In this situation, the other person forcibly has to make a choice: Either they allow you to get closer, or they retreat, and depending on the amount of fear, affection, and possibly fear for affection. This choice can be made both consciously or entirely subconsciously. With practice, you can learn to elicit and manipulate such a decision and even spot their decision before they themselves become aware of it.

Key Takeaways:

You can use this level of eye contact to force feelings of intimacy and gauge the reaction of your target. If they are comfortable with it, this means they are comfortable with you and like you. If they become defensive, it means they perceive you as a threat. If they become discomforted in any other way, try to find out the reason why, and adjust your behavior accordingly.
Practice, practice, practice. There is only one way to learn how to be comfortable with this level of eye-contact; to learn when and where it can be used to full effect; and to learn to spot the markers that indicate that you’re achieving what you’re setting out to do, be that intimidation or seduction – and that is practice!

Three: The way you look into people’s eyes indicates to them your level of comfort, and how you feel about them as a person.

It should be known that confident people elicit feelings of confidence in other people. Additionally, people are confident in the abilities of someone who acts confidently, and this includes the possibility of feeling intimidated by that person. And, much in the same way they mimic confidence, people will also become either comfortable or highly uncomfortable talking with you, depending on whether or not you seem to be comfortable talking with them.

When making an introduction and giving off a first impression, whether or not you decide to look them in the eye or avoid their gaze will send them an instant message. If a first impression is the most important thing for you to get right, looking someone in the eyes is one of the key elements to giving off the right first impression!

Looking someone in the eye while you’re introducing yourself tells them you hold them in high regard (as people tend to not meet the eyes of those they consider ‘inferior’), and that you’re confident in yourself (as people who are shy tend to look away). People are naturally drawn to people that think highly of them, as well as people that think highly of themselves.

This acknowledgment and assurance puts both parties at ease.

Key Takeaways:

Always acknowledge others by looking them in the eye. This goes for anytime you’re making an introduction, greeting someone, saying goodbye, and anytime you want to call someone’s attention or someone is calling your attention. People like to be acknowledged, and eye-contact is a sign of acknowledgement, first and foremost.
Conversely, whenever you want people to leave you alone, or you want to instill in people a sense of rejection or of being ignored, simply avert your gaze. When doing this purposefully, i.e. making it clear that you are deliberately trying to not look at them, people will invariably feel shut out. Depending on the situation, this will back them back off, become timid, or become irritated.
The same goes for controlling the conversation. Looking away from someone means that they can no longer give off the necessary facial cues to interrupt you, and so they will subconsciously refrain from doing so. To that end, looking away can stop you from being interrupted, and conversely, to come across charismatic it will serve you well look directly at them, allowing them a chance to interrupt you.

Four: Eye contact indicates attention to your brain, whether you want it to or not.

During a conversation, whenever you make eye contact with the speaker, you are signaling them that you’re listening and that you are interested in what they have to say. These signals are picked up subconsciously, meaning that you’ll need to maintain eye contact, even if they are aware that you are listening. Eye-contact is biologically ingrained as a marker for attention, and evading eye contact will cause tension, no matter your intentions or your reasons for not looking at them.

Not looking into someone’s eyes is usually an indicator of discomfort on some level. It can imply disgust, or social anxiety, or simply that they feel threatened – be that intimidated, overwhelmed, shy or scared. However, most commonly, it indicates boredom, which is probably the worst feeling to represent, as a person can often deal with being disliked, but not being ignored.
When it isn’t (perceived as) a marker of discomfort, it is a marker of inattention. That doesn’t mean someone is necessarily being inattentive to what you’re saying (i.e. that he isn’t listening to you), because often, when a person is looking away, they are simply processing the information you’ve given them. A brain has a limited cognitive capacity, meaning that a person when looking away is, in fact, being inattentive to something (in this case that’d be facial cues), even if this inattention relates to the eye-contact itself, and not what is being said. However – and this is crucial -, this is often not something the speaker can stop his subconscious from misinterpreting.

Key Takeaways:

Establish eye contact with someone before you start talking. That way, you know with certainty that the person is paying attention to you. Get their attention by way of touch, speech, gesture or positioning, but don’t elaborate on what you want until you have at least established eye contact.
Don’t assume that people understand your lack of eye contact, or that they don’t require you to look at them to feel like you’re paying attention, even if you yourself are comfortable with others not looking at you. Additionally, keep in mind that even people who explicitly state that they don’t mind are just as subconsciously inclined to take offense as anyone else.
Whenever your conversational partner is losing focus or not paying attention, make sure to pick up on that and call on them to pay attention. Similarly, call on yourself to pay attention whenever you feel like you’re drifting off in conversation. Don’t be swayed by the excuses that we all tell ourselves and others, like “I can do two things at once,” “I am listening, I’m just finishing this real quick,” or “Wait a minute – I need to respond to this text. It’ll only take a minute.” – NO. If you can’t stomach the effort of paying undivided attention for whatever amount of time you allow the other to take from you, then either you fail at setting boundaries or you fail at communicating properly. If people aren’t worth a moment your undivided attention, then clearly you don’t value them enough to have any reason to talk to them in the first place, which is exactly the impression you’ll give off. There is no excuse. Pay attention.

Five: Our predisposition for making eye contact is biologically ingrained and an evolutionary necessity.

From the moment we’re born, we are predisposed to paying attention to eyes and things similar to them. Babies look at people they can make eye contact with longer than those whom they cannot. They will bond quicker with people that look at them often, and will find them more likable. These biases extend into adulthood and are never really lost.

It makes sense from a survival standpoint, because the eyes of a person are a good indicator of threat (both direct threat from the person in question, and when the other person has spotted a threat) and of where the other person’s attention is. Knowing these things would have increased your chances of surviving immensely.

We have an unusual aptitude for determining the exact location of a person’s stare, even from across a crowded room, which is especially remarkable considering it is essentially just following a black sphere on a larger white sphere. (And indeed, to babies, a black sphere on a white background is an extremely salient stimulus, i.e. their attention is drawn by eye-like things quite easily.) In short, human psychology and biology is built around eye contact.

Key Takeaways:

By watching others and following their gaze we can assess where their attention is and what their perspective is, both in a physical sense (what are they looking at?) and a metaphorical one (where are they coming from?). Eye contact as a cue indicates understanding, and absence of eye-contact gives the impression one does not understand or chooses not to understand the other person. So, to build rapport (i.e. a sense of mutual understanding), make sure to maintain eye-contact.
It is very intuitive to use all listed biological predispositions to your advantage. We tend to favor people who look at us more often more, so look at others more often. We tend to look at other people’s eyes to determine where their attention lies and what their perspective it, so use your eyes to clarify or obfuscate your attention and intentions.

Recap, Part One

One: Initiate eye contact as often and with as many people as possible, and maintain that eye contact for as long as possible. Practice eye contact to rid yourself of any feeling of discomfort.
Two: Further practice your ability to maintain eye contact until you become comfortable with eliciting feelings of intimacy and threat, and learn how to use those feelings to gauge how other people feel about you.
Three: Always immediately acknowledge others by making straight eye contact. Learn to understand the effects of directing and averting your gaze, and use these to your advantage to control the conversation.
Four: Don’t break, avoid or lessen eye contact, unless you intend to communicate the message that you’re not paying attention. Correct yourself and correct others when their attention level drops. Remember that people are worth no less than your undivided attention, and the same thing goes for you!
Five: Our focus on eye contact and its importance in communication is biological and cannot be underestimated. Remember that people like people who notice them, and notice them often. Additionally, people use the eyes to try and understand one another. When possible, let your eyes do the talking!

Part two of this article can be found here! Also, please like our Facebook page or join our community on Reddit to be immediately notified when new content is released! See you there!
Thanks for reading, and best of luck in becoming a better you!