Written by Melinda Wenner Moyer for Scientific American
There’s a reason your mother told you to look people in the eye when you talk to them: eye contact conveys important social cues. Yet when someone holds your gaze for more than a few seconds, the experience can take on a different tenor. New work elucidates the factors that affect whether we like or loathe locking eyes for a lengthy period.
Researchers have long known that eye contact is an important social signal. Our recognition of its import may even be hardwired. One study found that five-day-old babies prefer looking at faces that make direct eye contact compared with faces that have an averted gaze. “Eye contact provides some of the strongest information during a social interaction,” explains James Wirth, a social psychologist now at Ohio State University at Newark, because it conveys details about emotions and intentions. (Lack of eye contact is one of the early signs of autism in infants and toddlers.) The power of eye contact is so great that, according to a 2010 study co-authored by Wirth, if someone avoids your gaze for even a short period, you may feel ostracized.
But what determines how we feel about prolonged eye contact? One recent study explored this question. In research presented in May 2015 at the Vision Sciences Society conference, psychologist Alan Johnston and his colleagues at University College London collected information from more than 400 volunteers about their personalities. Then the subjects indicated their comfort level while watching video clips of actors who appeared to be looking directly at them for varying lengths of time.
Johnston and his colleagues found that, on average, the subjects liked the actors to make eye contact with them for 3.2 seconds, but the subjects were comfortable with a longer duration if they felt the actors looked trustworthy as opposed to threatening. “Gaze conveys that you are an object of interest, and interest is linked to intention,” Johnston explains—so if someone appears threatening and holds your gaze, that could indicate that the person has bad intentions. This idea could help explain findings from a controversial study published in 2013, which reported that people are more likely to change their views on a political issue when they are being challenged by people who do not make eye contact with them. If the challengers had made eye contact, they might have seemed more threatening and less trustworthy.
Our reaction to prolonged eye contact may relate to how we perceive ourselves, too. Johnston and his colleagues found that the more cooperative and warm subjects believed themselves to be, the longer they liked eye contact to be held. Johnston speculates that the more socially comfortable a person feels, the more he or she may “enjoy the intimacy of mutual gaze.”
For more on eye contact and detecting deception, view this past blog.
Technology is changing language, period
My daughter Abigail’s good friend, Maxie, used to work at a bakery in our hometown of Westerville. One Saturday morning Abigail and I stopped by to say hello and get a sugary treat after having coffee. I noticed Maxie was busy replacing donuts and making sure the pastry trays were completely full. Unfortunately, it was a bad persuasion move on her part.I asked Maxie why she was so quick to restock the trays after a few donuts or pastries were purchased. She said the bakery owner liked the trays to be full and he believed they looked better that way. I told her that approach is actually working against the bakery making more sales. Let me explain.Two principles of influence were potentially at work in the bakery if the situation was handled correctly. The first was consensus – we look to others to see how we should behave in certain situations. The second principle was scarcity – we value things more when they’re rare or diminishing. When people walk into a bakery and see a tray with very few donuts left, consensus kicks in as the first thought is – those must be good donuts because everyone seems to be buying them. Next comes scarcity – with so few donuts left, if I don’t get one soon I might not be able to get one. Both principles become a huge draw do make a purchase!I’m pretty confident the owner of that bakery has many things for employees to do other than constantly restocking the shelves. One big thing would be having them engage customers and sharing what items are “selling like hotcakes.”Have you ever been to a store where you obviously needed help but an employee or employees seem more concerned with stocking the shelves? That’s frustrating. Some of that may be due to their hesitancy to interact with people but I’m sure some of the pressure comes from a manager who feels fully stocked shelves is a high priority for the store. Not smart if you want to sell more goods.Think about where you work. Are there things you have that people actually see? If so, don’t be so quick to “restock the shelves” because doing so reduces the impact of consensus and scarcity. Rather, manage the process so you convey what other people are buying and get your customer to “act now” so they don’t lose an opportunity. If you’re worried about employees standing around, teach them how positively engage customers in such a way that customers enjoy the buying experience and keep coming back.
Brian Ahearn, CMCT® Chief Influence Officer InfluencePEOPLE Helping You Learn to Hear “Yes”.