Eye Contact: An Effective Communication for Building Trust and Deeper Connection
In human beings, eye contact
is a form of non-verbal communication and is thought to have a large influence
on social behaviour. It can stimulate brain regions associated with social
cognition and empathy, leading to stronger social connections. Eye contact is
the situation in which two people look at each other’s eyes at the same time. Through
eyes, human communicate effectively a lot deeper level into other’s mind. It’s
not just about looking someone in the eyes; it’s about understanding, conveying
and interacting a wide range of emotions and speaks a lot of messages. In eye
contact, people build trust, enhance communication, create emotional
communication, enhance interpersonal relationships, demonstrate confidence to
authority and facilitate learning and understanding. We are giving and
receiving the love, trust and connection through the eye contact at the same
time and with the same person. This is an expression of connecting with two
people Thus, it is considered to be an important part of effective
communication. Eye contact activities related to social processing, including
the prefrontal cortex and superior temporal sulcus, which are essential for
understanding other’s emotions and intentions.
Scientific insights
- Neuroscience studies states that two people make eye contact, their neural
activity synchronizes, enhancing communication and understanding. Direct eye
contact stimulates specific inter-brain synchrony that are essential for
decoding another person’s emotions and intentions. Therefore, eye contact
during conversations, meetings, teachings can significantly enhance mindful
communication and genuine interactions.
Infant stage
- In a 2024 study, researchers noted that eye contact may help the infants to
develop their non-speaking form of communication and it helps to promote the
child-parent bond. Parents were encouraged to elicit vocalizations from infants
by eye contact and reciprocal vocalizations. When reciprocal socialization has
been investigated in infancy, mutual gaze or eye contact has been found to play
an important role in early social interaction. Thus, parents should establish
eye contact with infants and maintain joint attention.
Teenage stage
- The 2022 study demonstrated that Teens are asked to think about their own
voice, eye contact, facial expressions and body language while handling
disclosures. Lack of eye contact, not being able to see people’s faces and not
being able to lip-read were disturbing to most participants. These include
maladaptation to new situations, difficulties in maintaining friendships,
withdrawn and excessively shy behaviours, and avoidance of eye contact. Parents
were advised to hold their children despite resistance and to endeavour to
maintain eye contact and share emotions.
Couple stage
- The majority of disagreements between couples concerned whether eye contact
was established before or at the onset of the utterance. Husband made eye
contact with his wife and his restless movements diminished. He typically
avoids eye contact, fails to initiate conversational exchanges, and is
generally monosyllabic. While wife was talkative and engageable, and made good
eye contact, her genuine sincerity, her attentive eye contact and her almost
impish smile, which seemed always close to the spouse, yet broke open from
somewhere deep within.
Develop
trust and connection – Eye contact, as a socialising device, can
take a surprising amount of effort to maintain trust and healthy relationship.
Prolonged eye contact can deepen intimacy and create a sense of connection and
trust. It develops an amazing emotional level, mirroring each other’s feelings
and building empathy. It facilitates active listening and exchange of emotions,
respect and confidence.
Eye
contact can trigger the release of chemicals like phenylethylamine and
oxytocin. Phenylethylamine linked to attraction and oxytocin linked to bonding,
both provides the intimacy and romantic feelings of trust and potential
relationships.
In
counselling, strategies to support the client in telling their story include
open and closed questioning, active listening and the appropriate use of eye
contact and other body language. Eye reading promotes the clients to improve
their trust, enriching and facilitating interactions and free to communicate
with feeling of closeness. These include awareness of others, the development
of importance of body language, eye contact and the development of social
skills like sharing and turn-taking.
Look,
Don’t Stare – People’s eyes are a
‘window to the soul’- that they can tell us much about a person just
by gazing into them. So, over-powering eye contact can make the recipient
uncomfortable. Overly persistent eye contact is a sign of discomfort and
sometimes it causes intimidation to others. Evasive eye contact may distort and
being dishonest of trying to deceive the other person.
The customs and significance of eye contact vary widely between cultures, with religious and social differences often altering its meaning greatly. Furthermore, greater activation was associated with greater amounts of eye contact and better social functioning
Written By- Ms. Reshma Mathew - Consultant Psychologist (Mindmaris Counsellors India Pvt)
