A coworker and I were having a conversation the other day. It only lasted a few minutes, but I was very relieved when it was over. I’m pretty sure that her super intense gaze was the cause of my discomfort. I’m still thinking about it two days later, that’s how weird it was.
I know maintaining good eye contact is one of those things socially awkward people often have difficulty with. I’ve been told that I could do a better job with it myself, so I do make a conscious effort to look at people when I’m speaking to them. But what about the opposite? Have you ever heard of someone being told they need to NOT make so much eye contact?
A person with poor eye contact looks shy, maybe aloof. But a person who can’t break eye contact comes across as creepy, right? That seems like a worse offense, IMHO.
I agree. I take unbroken eye contact about as well as a feral cat or dog would. It is a dominance contest. That is the reason staring contests are so uncomfortable.
However, some people insist on it and I have learned to break that game. My ex-wife is one and she still makes deer in headlight gazes with her disturbingly blue eyes. I think she heard a long time ago that is an effective strategy to get what she wants but it is creepy as hell in reality.
The other one is the big boss at the facility that I work in. I love him to death but he intentionally tries to intimidate people and unbroken eye contact is one of the strategies that he uses. It used to scare me until I realized what he was doing and then I just started treating it like a game and I usually win now. I can probably beat him at checkers too but it doesn’t mean anything.
I am going to tell you the truth and everything I know whether we are locked in an eye gazing contest or not. I don’t do that to other people because most people don’t like it.
I’ve been told that I need to make eye contact when I’m shaking hands.
Well, that’s a little difficult for me to do. I’m clumsy, I have to look at your hand to ensure a proper handshake. And I seldom remember to look back up after the handshake has commenced.
We all use our eyes as signalling systems, one way and another. I assume everyone realizes that the reason for all the times “experts” say to keep eye contact, is that they are talking SPECIFICALLY about situations where failing to do so can send the wrong signal.
Intense eye contact is liable to trigger fight/fuck associations. Usually preferable to err on the side of less rather than more unless you do want it to go the fight/fuck route.
If you find it difficult to maintain eye contact, look at the point in-between the eyes of the person. Most people can’t tell the difference and you don’t get the information overload that sometimes happens when looking someone in the eye.
I used to have a relative who not only made intense eye contact, but she made it from mere inches away from your face. Everybody avoided having anything to say to her. She was a creepy person in other ways too.
I like people who make good eye contact with me, especially when shaking hands and when having a serious conversation, but people who give hawk-like stares, that’s just weird.
I think it entirely depends on the circumstance. For instance, as mentioned with regard to handshakes and all, a good intense eye contact is a good way of showing confidence or dominance. For example, one thing I was always conscious of when interviewing for a job was making sure I was making solid eye contact. Similarly, eye contact can be incredibly intimate to the point where I recall reading about some studies where they’d have strangers just silently gaze into each other’s eyes for several minutes and they’d typically report feeling intimacy for each other afterward. In fact, along with that, I recall them also talking about using that as a sort of exercise for increasing or rekindling intimacy in preexisting relationships.
As for which is worse, obviously there’s an ideal balance, but consider the job interview or negotiation type of situation. In that sort of situation, it’s probably a bit better to appear a little over-confident than the opposite which could potentially make you look dishonest or incapable or weak or whatever. In that case, I think the worse situation “sin” is bad eye contact. On the other end, if one is flirting with someone, probably better to err on the side of being seen as shy than as a creep.
And for things in between, speaking for myself, if we’re getting into intellectual and theoretical stuff, I don’t expect much eye contact because I’m often gazing off into space forming my thoughts; in fact, that’d be kind of weird for someone hold hard eye contact in that sort of situation. And on the other end, if it’s an emotional or passionate conversation, I’d expect more eye contact because we should be reading all the subtle cues that go along with that sort of conversation. For me, those types of conversations are really stunted both in my ability to read them and their ability to read me without sufficient eye contact, and chances are one of us will find it frustrating pretty quickly.
I’m surprised nobody’s mentioned this, but for me lots of eye contact isn’t a problem except when it’s those weirdos who never blink. Then it’s uncomfortable. I used to work with a guy who got a new boss. The boss might have been a nice guy but I always pegged him as a hard-ass simply because he never, ever blinked. It made it look like he was glaring at you all the time, even in situations that didn’t warrant conflict. He also never smiled. <shudder>
Between the two extremes, unrelenting eye-contact unsettles me the most. Its hard not to assign uncharitable motivations to someone has this habit, because it’s very hard to relate to.
I briefly dated a guy who did this to me. When I called his attention to it, he acted like I should be flattered because obviously he couldn’t take his eyes off my magnificent face. My body language should’ve told him that, nope, I didn’t find this flattering at all, I found it weird and creepy AF. He continued to do it even after I told him this.
He was a psychiatry resident. I feel sorry for his patients.