Eye Contact: The Power of The Gaze Whilst engaging in social communication, whether verbal or non-verbal, eyes play a crucial role in expressing and identifying certain focus points and attention cues among humans. Direct and prolonged eye contact is more common during communication in European American and Arab cultures, while Latin American, Japanese, and African cultures perceive direct eye contact as an insult (Weiten, 2012). This research paper will entail research wholly from American and European American culture where eye contact is not an insult, but rather a medium used to gauge other humans’ mental and emotional states during communication. According to Weiten, who cited the research efforts of Vida & Maurer, the ability in humans
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While it is not proven that a lie can be detected strictly based on eye contact, it is proven that the seriousness of what someone is saying can affect their gaze. A study by Williams, Burns, and Harmon found that speakers are more likely to break eye contact with listeners when they are making a sarcastic or less-serious statement (Weiten, 2012). This gaze aversion, as it is referred to, has been long speculated by researchers and psychologists alike. After all, when it comes to eye contact, most humans are very seasoned with experience, and have built up many presumptions as to what certain eye contact patterns mean, regardless of what may be …show more content…
Maintained eye contact and forward torso lean both signal that a listener is responsive to what the speaker has to say and moreover to the speaker as a person. Feelings of intimacy, trust, empathy, and overall comfort are gained for a person based on how responsive they are perceived to be (Dowell, 2013). People who are more responsive are seen as more likely to attend to another’s needs and actually listen to what someone has to say. Eye contact can create feelings of connectedness between a speaker and listener, which helps make a person more comfortable to share more intimate information and all together better the social relationship. Lack of attentiveness and responsive non-verbal communication can make a speaker feel as if they are not effectively connecting to the listener, creating more negative feelings toward the listener (Dowell,
While it is not proven that a lie can be detected strictly based on eye contact, it is proven that the seriousness of what someone is saying can affect their gaze. A study by Williams, Burns, and Harmon found that speakers are more likely to break eye contact with listeners when they are making a sarcastic or less-serious statement (Weiten, 2012). This gaze aversion, as it is referred to, has been long speculated by researchers and psychologists alike. After all, when it comes to eye contact, most humans are very seasoned with experience, and have built up many presumptions as to what certain eye contact patterns mean, regardless of what may be …show more content…
Maintained eye contact and forward torso lean both signal that a listener is responsive to what the speaker has to say and moreover to the speaker as a person. Feelings of intimacy, trust, empathy, and overall comfort are gained for a person based on how responsive they are perceived to be (Dowell, 2013). People who are more responsive are seen as more likely to attend to another’s needs and actually listen to what someone has to say. Eye contact can create feelings of connectedness between a speaker and listener, which helps make a person more comfortable to share more intimate information and all together better the social relationship. Lack of attentiveness and responsive non-verbal communication can make a speaker feel as if they are not effectively connecting to the listener, creating more negative feelings toward the listener (Dowell,