The implications? For one thing, steady eye contact will help you motivate people to complete actions they’ve already agreed to undertake. Someone’s gaze can be a channel of truth or a barometer of lies, depending on the speaker’s intent and the listener’s sensitivity. In either scenario, we can appreciate how powerful eye contact really is. On the other hand, if someone already agreed with what was being said, they were likely to agree even more if they made steady, prolonged eye contact with the speaker. This might be because liars are scientifically proven to hold more and deliberate eye contact than people telling the truth. Participants who disagreed with the viewpoint they were listening to were less likely to be persuaded by someone the more eye contact they made with the speaker. First, the study involved people watching videos about controversial subjects. There are some caveats to this general rule. Using the latest in eye-tracking technology, Frances Chen (now an assistant professor at the University of British Columbia) and her team of researchers found that the more eye contact subjects made with a video while they listened, the less likely they were to believe what was being said. In many cases, people can be more resistant to persuasion when making eye contact, as researchers at the University of Freigburg, Germany found. But it can also have the opposite effect.
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And that’s the focus of this piece: five things every person should know about the science of eye contact, the benefits of mastering it, and how to make the most of your gaze.Įye contact can make people more resistant to persuasion.Įye contact makes you more persuasive, right? Yes. If you want to become a master of eye contact, it’s going to take some practice, along with a good grasp of the underlying theory. Back then, eye contact meant the difference between life and death, attraction and indifference.Īnd yet most people have never given any thought to how good or bad their eye contact is. In fact, you’re reading this article in large part because your caveman ancestors had an intuitive mastery of eye contact. And beyond the science, think about your personal experience: We study people’s eyes to judge their character, we notice when someone meets our gaze, and we are highly conscious of where our eyes wander.
A 2002 study from MIT found that infants were far more likely to try and follow an adult’s eyes rather than just their head movements. As it happens, humans - the only primates with white eyes - are drawn to eye contact from an early age. To understand why eye contact is so important, we need to appreciate how central it is to the human experience. That’s why it’s so important, and that’s why it’s one of the fundamental skills we emphasize so strongly at The Art of Charm. The simple act of holding someone’s gaze - whether it’s a new girl, a prospective employer or an old friend - has the power to ignite or deepen a relationship. Eye contact is one of the easiest and most powerful ways to make a person feel recognized, understood and validated.
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