The power of looking into your eyes: playing with the laws of attraction.

Knowing how to hold your gaze can help you be more attractive and persuasive.

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 our daily lives paying attention to the scenes unfolding before our eyes, imagining specific images and unconsciously judging the nonverbal language of others, much of which is visual.

The visual experience, the one we like the most

In our free time we love to satisfy our need to be entertained through our eyes, and in order to see things we are even capable of watching a succession of television commercials, something that from a rational perspective only benefits the advertiser.

Our brain is able to pick up this apparent chaos of visual information and make sense of it.because it is made to adapt to 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 gaze is one of our best weapons for adapting of 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 gaze meets another gaze? What processes are triggered when someone's eyes meet ours and vice versa?

Creating intimacy from the gaze

Eye contact seems to be closely related to the creation of intimate emotional bonds and the selection of potential mates. 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 norm in other cases is to dedicate 30% to 60% of the time to this. In addition, the better the quality of the relationship, the better the quality of the relationship (as measured by questionnaires), the more the members of the relationship tend to look at each other..

But a reciprocated gaze is not simply a symptom of intimacy: it can also be a contributing factor in creating this climate of intimacy. In one experiment, a series of 72 people, strangers to each other, were placed facing each other and asked to gaze into each other's eyes uninterruptedly for two minutes. The couples who followed these instructions to the letter showed a greater feeling of affection. and romantic love for the other person, something that did not happen 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 the other person's blinks.

Why does this happen?

The eyes are one of the parts of the face on which we focus our gaze the most when interacting with someone. This, which seems natural and even obvious, is a rarity in the animal kingdom.. However, our species has evolved to have extraordinary control of the facial muscles around the eyes, and we are also particularly good at recognizing the nuances and subtleties behind these small movements. That's why, to get to know someone, this is one of our favorite parts to focus our attention on, besides the mouth.

However, when we are not only looking into someone's eyes but that someone is looking back at us, the interaction changes completely as Theory of Mind comes into play, which can be briefly defined as our ability to think about what is going through the other person's mind, which may be based on what they think is going through our mind, etc.

In a way, the fewer barriers that are placed on this real-time transmission of information in the form of sustained gaze 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 see not only eyes, but the possible image we are giving mixed with the information revealed by the other person.. This is why eye contact is a phenomenon in which insecurity can manifest itself as well as attunement and the creation of an intimate context.

In the negotiation between the information one gets from the other and the information one gives about oneself, comfortably maintaining eye contact is a symptom of comfort and security in what one says and does. symptom of comfort and security in what is being said and done, while thewhile the opposite is true for aversion.

In fact, already in groups of 6-year-old children, a tendency has been found to associate eye contact with honesty and aversion of the other's gaze with lying, while those who avert their gaze may do so because they lack the ability to focus their attention on the other's gaze while maintaining a false self-image that appears coherent.

Spontaneity is rewarded

Holding someone's gaze seems to have a relatively high cognitive cost (we lose focus), and if we do this deliberately and not subconsciously, the difficulty of maintaining an agile and stimulating dialogue may decline. Thus, 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.

In short, 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-worked self-esteem and the belief that what we can offer to the other person will serve for mutual benefit.

Referencias bibliográficas:

• Einav, S. y Hood, B. M. (2008). Tell-tale eyes: children’s attribution of gaze aversion as a lying cue. Developmental Psychology, 44(6), pp. 1655 - 1667.

• Kellerman, J., Lewis, J y Laird, J. D. (1989). Looking and loving: the effects of mutual gaze on feelings of romantic love. Journal of Research on Personality, 23(2), pp. 145 - 161.

• Rubin, Z. (1970). Measurement of romantic love. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 16(2), pp. 265 - 273.