The Power Of Looking Into Each Other’s Eyes: Playing With The Laws Of Attraction
Humans are one of the few mammalian species in which a relatively large brain is combined with a great capacity to process visual stimuli. We spend every day paying attention to the scenes that unfold before our eyes, imagining specific images and unconsciously judging the non-verbal language of others, much of which is visual.
In our free time we love to satisfy our needs to be entertained through our eyes, and in order to see things we are even capable of watching a succession of television advertisements, something that from a rational perspective only benefits the advertiser.
Our brain is able to collect this apparent chaos of visual information and make sense of it, because it is made to accommodate a massive amount of data and prioritize certain aspects over others. It is not for nothing that approximately one third of the human brain is dedicated to processing visual information. It can be said that The look is one of our best weapons adaptation to the environment.
But there is a context in which the gaze is not simply a data collection tool. What happens when, instead of searching for important information in a continuous stream of moving figures and textures, one look meets another look? What processes are triggered when someone fixes their eyes on ours and vice versa?
Eye contact seems to be closely related to the creation of intimate emotional bonds and the selection of potential partners. One study, for example, indicates that couples who are linked through a romantic relationship maintain eye contact during 75% of the time they dedicate to a conversation with each other, while the normal thing in the rest of the cases is to dedicate to this 30% to 60% of the time. Besides, The better the quality of the relationship (measured through questionnaires), the more the members of the relationship tend to look at each other
But a reciprocated look is not a simple symptom of intimacy: it can also be a factor that contributes to creating that climate of intimacy. In an experiment, a series of 72 people, strangers to each other, were placed facing each other, and they were asked to look into each other’s eyes uninterruptedly for two minutes. Couples who followed these instructions to the letter showed a greater feeling of affection and romantic love towards the other person, something that did not occur to the same extent if instead of looking into each other’s eyes they looked at the other person’s hands or concentrated on counting their blinks.
Why is this happening?
The eyes are one of the parts of the face on which we focus our gaze the most when we interact with someone. This, which seems natural and even obvious, It is a rarity within the animal kingdom However, our species has evolved to have extraordinary control of the facial muscles around the eyes, and we are also especially good at recognizing the nuances and subtleties behind these small movements. That’s why, when getting to know someone, this is one of our favorite parts to focus our attention on, besides their mouth.
However, when we are not only looking at someone’s eyes but that someone is looking back at us, the interaction changes completely when Theory of Mind comes into play, which can be briefly defined as our ability to think about what is happening. is going through the other person’s mind, which may be based on what they think is going through our minds, etc.
In some way, the fewer barriers are placed on this transmission of information in real time in the form of a gaze held and reciprocated by the other person, the more intimate it becomes in context.
Between honesty and lies
When we meet a gaze that confronts us, We not only see eyes, but also the possible image that we are giving mixed with the information that the other person reveals to us This is why eye contact is a phenomenon in which both insecurity and harmony and the creation of an intimate context can manifest.
In the negotiation between the information that is obtained from the other and that which is given about oneself, comfortably maintaining eye contact is an symptom of comfort and security in what is said and done while the opposite happens with aversion.
In fact, a tendency has already been found in groups of 6-year-old children to associate eye contact with honesty and aversion to the other’s gaze with lying, while those who look away could do so because they do not have the ability to focus your attention on the other’s gaze and at the same time maintain a false image of yourself that seems coherent.
Holding someone’s gaze seems to have a relatively high cognitive cost (it distracts us), and if we also do this deliberately and not subconsciously, the difficulty of maintaining an agile and stimulating dialogue can decrease. In this way, people who express their affinity with someone through spontaneous and not entirely planned reciprocal glances have an advantage over those who try to maintain eye contact as if it were an imposition.
Definitely, Those people who have less reason to lie (verbally or gesturally) about themselves are able to make mutual eye contact last longer We can conclude from this that to benefit from the power of holding the gaze, it is not enough to try to put it into practice, but it must go hand in hand with a well-developed self-esteem and the belief that what we can offer to the other person will be useful. for mutual benefit.
