Why is it so powerful to meet another person's gaze? (2023)

No doubt you have had the experience of looking someone in the eye in a crowded and noisy room. It's almost like a scene from a movie: the rest of the world goes gray as you and that other soul connect for a moment in the mutual knowledge that they are watching you and you watching them.

Of course, eye contact isn't always that exciting—after all, it's a natural part of most casual conversations—but it almost always counts. we doAssumptions about the personality of people.depending on how often they meet our gaze or look away when we speak to them. And when we pass strangers on the street or in another public place, it could be us.feeling rejected if you don't make eye contact.

We already know this from our everyday experiences. But psychologists and neuroscientists have studied eye contact for decades, and their fascinating findings reveal much more about its power, including what our eyes reveal and how eye contact changes our opinion of the other person looking at us.

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A recurring observation, for example, is that the eyes fixgraspmiholdour attention, making us less aware of what is happening around us (that "grey" that I mentioned before). Also,Looking at someone's face triggers a series of brain processes almost immediately., as we understand the fact that we are before the ghost of another person who looks at us. As a result, we become more aware of the action of that other person,who have their own opinion and perspective– and that, in turn, defines usmore confident.

You may have felt these effects especially strongly if you've ever held the intense gaze of a monkey or ape in a zoo: it's almost impossible not to be overcome by the deep feeling that they are a conscious being, judging and controlling you. actually evenlooking at a painted portraitWhat appears to be making eye contact has been shown to trigger a variety of brain activities related to social cognition, that is, in regions involved in thinking about ourselves and others.

Research shows that fixed eyes attract our attention (Image credit: Getty Images)

Not surprisingly, the drama of realizing that we are the object of another mind is very disturbing. considera recent studyby Japanese researchers. The volunteers watched a video of a face while simultaneously completing a word challenge to find verbs that went with different nouns (to give a simple example, if they heard the noun "milk," the appropriate response would be "drink"). Crucially, the volunteers struggled much more with the word challenge (but only with the more difficult nouns) when the face in the video appeared to make eye contact with them. The researchers believe this effect is because eye contact, even with a stranger on video, is so intense that it depletes our cognitive reserves.

Similar research has found that a person also meets the direct gaze of another.ruins our working memory(our ability to remember and use information in short periods of time), ourperformance, it's ourscontrol mental, in terms of our ability to suppress irrelevant information. You may have experienced these effects firsthand, perhaps inadvertently, when you broke eye contact with another person to better focus on what you are saying or thinking. Some psychologists even recommend looking away to help children answer questions.

Research shows that not only are our brains in overdrive, but eye contact shapes our perception of the other person meeting our gaze. For example, we often perceive people who make more eye contact as such.more intelligent, more conscious and sincere(at least in western cultures), and we're going tomore inclined to believe what they say.

Of course, too much eye contact can make us uncomfortable, and people looking and holding can seem scary. In a study conducted at a science museum,Psychologists have recently tried to determine the preferred duration of eye contact.. They concluded that it is an average of three seconds long (and no one preferred looks longer than nine seconds).

The drama of realizing that we are the object of another mind is very disturbing (Credit: Getty Images)

Another documented effect of mutual gaze may explain why this moment of eye contact across a room can sometimes seem so enticing. A recent study found that looking at each other leads to a kind of partial fusion of self and other:We judge that strangers we make eye contact with are more like us., in terms of his personality and his appearance. Perhaps in the right context, when everyone is busy talking to other people, this effect contributes to the feeling that you and the person looking at you are sharing a special moment.

The chemistry of eye contact doesn't end there. If you decide to get closer, you and your gaze partner will find that eye contact connects you in other ways as well, in a process known as "pupil mimicry" or "pupil contagion": this describes how your pupils and the other person they extend. and contract synchronously. This has been interpreted as a form of unconscious social mime, a kind of dance of the eyes, and that would be the most romantic approach.

But recently there has been some skepticism about this, with researchers saying the phenomenon is simplya response to fluctuations in the brightness of the other person's eyes(Up close, when the other person's pupils dilate, it increases the darkness of the scene, causing your pupils to dilate as well.)

Even looking into the eyes of a portrait painting triggers the kind of brain activity associated with social cognition (Image credit: Getty Images)

However, centuries before this research, conventional wisdom certainly considered dilated pupils attractive. At various points in history, women have even used a plant extract to intentionally dilate their pupils to make themselves more attractive (hence the plant's slang name: "belladonna").

But when you look deeply into the eyes of another person, don't think that it is only your pupils that are sending you a message. Other recent research suggests so.We can read complex emotions from the muscles of the eyes.— that is, if a person squints or opens them wide. For example, if an emotion such as disgust causes us to squint, that “eye look”, as a facial expression, also indicates our disgust towards others.

Another important feature of the eye are the limbal rings: the dark rings that surround the iris. Recent evidence suggests that these curls are more visible on younger, healthier people, and that viewers know this on some level, so straight women looking for a short-term fling tend to rate men with more visible curls. like getting healthier.desirable.

Look into the eyes of a gorilla and you'll realize you're being scrutinized by another intellect (Credit: Getty Images)

All of this research suggests that there is more than a grain of truth to the old adage that the eyes are a window to the soul. In fact, there is something incredibly powerful about looking deeply into another person's eyes. It is said that our eyes are the only part of our brain that is directly exposed to the world.

When you look another person in the eye, think: "Touching brains" could be the closest thing, or touching souls, if you want to be more poetic about those things. Given such intense intimacy, it's perhaps not surprising that if you dim the lights and hold another person's gaze for 10 minutes straight, you'll find strange things happening.maybe stranger than you've ever experienced before.

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Dr. Christian Jarrettedits those of the British Psychological SocietyResearch SummaryFor the Blog. His next book, Personology, will be published in 2019.

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