Eye Contact: How Long Is Too Long? | Hacker News Reader

Eye Contact: How Long Is Too Long?

scientificamerican.com

60 pointsjimsojim20 comments

I recently finished an improv class that touched on the importance of eye contact when portraying different levels of "status" while improvising a character. Eye contact was said to be a high-status behavior, and an easy trick to portray yourself as a person in a position of power was to make plenty of eye contact (among other body language hints). The opposite was true for low-status characters. Being comfortable holding eye-contact with someone was akin to seeing them as an equal, which could lead to them liking you more due to in-group bias. A hobby of mine now is to actively play with the level of eye contact I make with people and see how they react - holding eye contact with my boss for a long time, for example.

I failed a job interview recently where the interviewer seemed much less comfortable than me with eye contact. He was fidgeting constantly and only briefly looking into my eyes and then quickly looking away. On the other hand, I remained confident, composed and was perfectly comfortable maintaining eye contact.

On paper, the interview went great and I had no problems with the whiteboard questions or any of the other questions. However, his body language was clearly not vibing with mine. He may have felt I came off too aggressive and overconfident. For the record, I did not think it was confrontational, in fact the conversation itself was pretty easy going and fun as far as technical interviews go.

I've been thinking about it and trying to come up with a way of calibrating my body language in the moment to make the other person more at ease. If anyone has any suggestions on reading, I'd love to hear them. I've read that FBI agent's book [1] since then and found it a little bit helpful, but nothing earthshattering. The author is more concerned with cracking/breaking people than making them comfortable.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/What-Every-BODY-Saying-Speed-Reading/d...

From the description, I would not be surprised if the cause for the interviewer's behavior was that the decision had already been made to hire someone else. Eye contact patterns, if they have significance, probably reflect some internal state, e.g. confidence.

"The author is more concerned with cracking/breaking people than making them comfortable."

Incorrect. The author is retired FBI Agent, Joe Navarro, [0] an expert on reading and interpreting non-verbal body language. One of the cornerstone of non-verbals, explained in WEBIS, is the comfort/discomfort paradigm. [1],[2]

Is a person comfortable? Why not? Is there a mismatch between verbal communication and non-verbal actions? This is where rapport comes in, the ability to make someone feel at ease and something taught by the FBI when interviewing. They don't "break" people, they charm them by putting them at ease, let them drop their guard and inquire further. The earth shattering point of WEBIS is everybody exhibits these body language responses and I consider it to be a sort of human response API regardless of country, age or sex.

As for eye contact. Hold too little contact and you appear submissive. Too much and you may be signalling to another person you are aggressive.

[0] backgrounder by Octavio Blanco "This former FBI spy hunter fled Cuba at age 9" ~ http://money.cnn.com/2015/10/27/news/economy/joe-navarro-cub...

[1] Navarro, 2007.

[2] read Charles Fifield, "Setting the Sale Through Persuasive Communication" http://www.baylor.edu/business/kellercenter/news.php?action=...

Thanks for the links, I'm reading them now. I appreciate the informative correction to my previous post.

I confess I must have misread his points because many of the stories are about criminal interrogations (although there are plenty of business stories too). I just bought his other book Louder Than Words and I will be reading that looking for the charm/rapport aspect instead of "breaking".

This kind of analysis feels flawed because people from different cultures have different body language.

There are differences, but there are also some [near-]universals. Have you read the book?

Definitely find a copy of Impro by Keith Johnstone. Most likely the source of the poster's improv games. Really a lot of great insight about status and how to play status like a game.

The Internet Archived has referenced this full scan of the book on PDF.yt: http://pdf.yt/d/KIkLrSPi_3lzPl5v

No idea how legal this is though, download at your own risk.

This book is so different from what I normally read that I would have never considered picking it up, but it seems to have only glowing reviews. Thanks for the suggestion!

This seems like a very unique book, thank you for the suggestion! I'll be reading this one for sure.

Try mirroring his body language next time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirroring_(psychology)

If someone is uncomfortable with eye contact I try to make less of it while still being engaged in listening.

Having read about the same thing and had my own phase of experimentation - I felt bad when I hold eye contact with someone too long and portrayed myself as "higher status" when it's someone who is supposed to have higher status than I am. If I hold the eye contact excessively, it feels like I'm ready to throw them under the bus when the time comes to it. So now I avoid doing it when it's someone who's higher status than I am, who I like and who I want to respect. I think varying eye contact has an effect on relationships, on the other person as well as on myself.

Meta question: The article is dated Jan 1, 2016. That's 4 days from now. Is it common for magazines to publish articles "in the future"? Do they do this so the electronic date matches the print date?

Yes, articles are dated according to the print issue they're in even though they go online before printing.

That may not even be before printing. Chances are the paper version even already is in stores.

Does one deemed to be always percepted as an underdog, if he intentionally avoids any eye contact?

For example, even a glimpse into the interlocutor's eye while having a conversation (esp. a constructive/technical one) completely shatters my thought process, feels like my mental resources are drained towards some unconscious "computation". Almost the same effect with the facial features alone, yet not that strong. As a result, when I interact with someone, I do not look at that person, even when handshaking, just unconsciously focus on some static object: cup of coffee, crack on the wall, etc.

People who stoutly seeks an eye contact, despite all the avoidance, literaly derange me. Blood is just freaking boils in my veins, like I am going to punish it in its weasel face right now (never happend though, just state of mind). On contrary, I have no such problem with babies (hard to estimate, but probably up to age of 6 or sth like that) or domestic animals.

Has anyone encountered something like that? Do you consider that a problem? As for me, I feel that such trait constrains my ability to effectively (eg. being treated as an equal) engage in communication in non-technical social environments.

It probably does; you really should work on that. (I say that as a fellow introvert.) Eye contact is one of those things where moderation is definitely key; too little and people think you're shifty or withdrawn, too much and they think you're a psychopath or something. A good amount shows confidence, but too much is intimidating. The way you act is going to severely limit your ability to socialize and get good employment, a girlfriend, etc.

As for animals and babies, that makes perfect sense too: those things aren't usually a threat to you in any way, either physically or socially, except maybe for large and aggressive dogs in which case strong eye contact is useful because it shows the dog that you're the "alpha dog".

While avoiding eye contact can be because of many things, it might we worth looking into this autism test: http://psychcentral.com/quizzes/autism-quiz.htm, and if you score sufficiently high and if it's available to you, to make an appointment with a psychologist.

It's not so much that a potential diagnosis solves your problems, but it can provide valuable insights (and some help as well).

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