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!
