I recently helped to answer a question on Mens Health - Maybe you can benefit from my answer...
Question: I struggle to maintain eye contact. Can you help? Matt, Boston, MA
Answer: First, understand why you're loathe to lock eyes. "When you feel dominated, anxious, or shy, you look away as an attempt to regain control, disengage, and limit how much information you take in," says John Dovidio, Ph.D., a psychology professor at Yale University. So before any important conversation, make a conscious effort to rein in your addled emotions. If you're still struggling with eye contact, take the advice of body-language expert Patti Wood, M.A., and "split your attention among the person's mouth, eyes, and cheeks." This makes wandering eyes less obvious. And don't stop trying: University of Colorado researchers found that meeting a person's gaze makes you seem powerful and credible.
Showing posts with label eyes body language cooperation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label eyes body language cooperation. Show all posts
Wait untill you see the whites of their eyes!
"Wait untill you see the whites of their eyes!", is the iconic battle cry of the commander under siege as the attackers come in mass upon the fort, circle of wagons or up the hills toward his men.
Strangely, the large whites of the eyes in human where designed to help us cooperate.
Recent research at Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology discovered that unlike chimps and apes who look at head movement, children pay more attention to eye movement.
Apes and chimps need to mask where they are looking looking from other primates and thus do not have those bright whites of the eyes. Anthropologist Brain Hare says primates who do not have bright whites can hide where they are looking from others so they can, "...eat it, mate it, or chase it," I am thinking the chasing might come first, but I digress.
Humans however have evolved the bright whites of the eyes to contrast with our baby blues Iris and dark pupils so we can easily see the direction of another person's gaze.
The theory is that the advantages of understanding and cooperation received through mutual gaze outweigh a having a poker face. This is particular useful to me as I am not a great poker player, but boy can I read that body language.
I think this also interesting if your apply all the information we get subconsciously from eye gaze and brain function. That is the science of NLP. Which I have blogged about previously. I love that we were designed to create mutual gaze. If your interested in the whites of the eyes research pick up this months Scientific American Mind. Just another fun body language fact.
Strangely, the large whites of the eyes in human where designed to help us cooperate.
Recent research at Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology discovered that unlike chimps and apes who look at head movement, children pay more attention to eye movement.
Apes and chimps need to mask where they are looking looking from other primates and thus do not have those bright whites of the eyes. Anthropologist Brain Hare says primates who do not have bright whites can hide where they are looking from others so they can, "...eat it, mate it, or chase it," I am thinking the chasing might come first, but I digress.
Humans however have evolved the bright whites of the eyes to contrast with our baby blues Iris and dark pupils so we can easily see the direction of another person's gaze.
The theory is that the advantages of understanding and cooperation received through mutual gaze outweigh a having a poker face. This is particular useful to me as I am not a great poker player, but boy can I read that body language.
I think this also interesting if your apply all the information we get subconsciously from eye gaze and brain function. That is the science of NLP. Which I have blogged about previously. I love that we were designed to create mutual gaze. If your interested in the whites of the eyes research pick up this months Scientific American Mind. Just another fun body language fact.
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