Eyes are important. Not only are they the primary portal through which we perceive the world (~30% of cortex is involved in vision), the eyes can reveal the interests and intentions of others. It's no mistake that the eye has been referred to as "the window to the soul" since Biblical times.
The other day my professor made the point that eye-contact is not a property of the individual. Eye-contact emerges from interactions between individuals. A little bit of close observation reveals that eye-contact is not just a social phenomenon; it's also a powerful social tool.
Have you ever tried to catch someones eye? Or how about in movies, when lovers/enemies lock eyes before they kiss/fight? Or when a tour guide advises you "not to make eye-contact" with vendors in a foreign country?
When someone is lying they are often shifty-eyed and we look askance at them. According to Dictionary.com, to 'look askance' at someone is to "disapprove", while 'askance' simply means "sideways or obliquely". We show our disapproval by withdrawing access to eye-contact.
Eye-contact in humans is fun, but it has also proved to be an interesting tool for analyzing the interactions of non-human primates. Dr. Christine Johnson (UCSD) has been studying a triad (group of three) of bonobos (monkeys, above.) at the San Diego Zoo. They don't talk and there is no way to 'look inside' of their heads to see what their thinking, but they are obviously social and cognitive. So Dr. Johnson decided to code her data for "brightness", the degree to which each bonobo is facing the others (i.e. access to eye-contact). Her data reveal that access to eye-contact ("brightness") in the group is reliably correlated with patterns in their social interactions.
While I'm not really doing justice to the topic of eye-contact, or even to Dr. Johnsons research, for that matter, I hope you see what I mean.
3 comments:
Interesting that a lot of these metaphors ("eye contact", "breaking gaze", "locking eyes", "catching an eye") treat gaze as some kind of physical substance. (When people wave at each other, we don't call it "locking hands", or "hand contact".) I think this is because we think of human eyes as projecting some sort of palapable columns of agency. Other parts of the body stop at the skin. But gaze is like a flashlight beam of self that we cast over the world. David McNeill has talked about this, calling the gaze an "eidola," but I don't know where he got that from.
Yeah, eye-contact is a biggie. If you won't look someone in the eye when you're talking to them, it's really rude and childish. And annoying.
But, you got to admit, sometimes it's unnerving if people stare into your eyes too much!
I do absolutely understand what you mean. My father is a politician and a diplomat and as his daughter, I learned many tricks right on his knee. First and foremost how to show interest in someone by making direct eye contact and maintaining same contact throughout the length of the interaction. I have found that lesson quite effective throughout my life and enhanced my ability to communicate effectively and quickly by its use. Learning how to look at someone to the degree that the eye contact is a separate language in itself outside of whatever else might be going on is not an easy trick to master.
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