Eye Contact - The Invisible Grip | Hacker News Reader

Eye Contact - The Invisible Grip

esquire.com

96 pointsDarrenMills24 comments

I read this when it was first published in 2006. It's a bit strange to say, but it actually had a significant impact on my life and how I interact with people.

It comes across as hostile ("I thought of it as a kind of dominance, holding them in the kind of invisible grip you might have once seen employed by a villain in a DC comic...", etc). Am I interpreting this incorrectly? Can you elaborate on the impact it's had on your interactions?

Staring someone down is seen as hostile, but giving eye contact has a profound effect on how people react to you.

For a long time I had problems giving eye contact, and many geeks I know are like that - we often look down or to the side. That makes us seem maladjusted, weak/insecure and/or submissive in many situations, and people change the way they react to you accordingly. It also makes people not particularly interested in walking up to you to start a conversation.

Looking people straight in the eyes, as long as you don't overdo it, makes you seem approachable, strong and self confident. Just that one change of looking people straight in the eyes more had a big impact for me on making me more social - I'm still bad at approaching people and start talking to them, but when you give eye contact the number of people who will start conversations with you can easily skyrocket.

What I mean is not staring at people incessantly, that's creepy, but keep eye contact until either they look away or 4-5 seconds or so. During conversations, keep steady eye contact maybe 70% of the time. And avoid "jerking away" - often when someone is insecure about maintaining eye contact you'll see them pull their eyes away quickly, often turning their entire head away, as if you caught them doing something they shouldn't. It doesn't give off a positive impression.

You'll see peoples demeanor change when you meet their eyes. During my commute most people walk around with vacant expressions on their faces. Get eye contact, and smile, and you see lots of people light up like christmas trees. The same happens when I talk to people - staff in shops in particular, who often seem downright robotic normally, tends to light up, and start holding proper conversations and telling me all kinds of things about their life after I started making a point of giving eye contact.

I'm in London which is unusually "cold" in this respect even for Europe, so you might not see the same effect, but try looking around you to see how few people give eye contact to shop staff; it'd drive me crazy to work in an environment like that.

Of course you can use it as a kind of dominance that freaks people out. If you're able to keep eye contact until the other person always breaks off, then you will see a lot of people adopt a more submissive attitude to you. Personally I'd rather they just see me as someone approachable and nice to be around.

His description makes it seem like a tool for ill, but I've found it to be very useful for positive effects as well.

I work in emergency services (Fire/EMS), and eye contact is an amazingly effective way to calm someone down. Make eye contact, slow your own breathing down, speak calmly and firmly. I've seen very few panicky people who were "immune" to this.

Like the article describes, making solid eye contact seems to break someone out of the moment and get them to focus on you. What you do after that is what determines how "hostile" you're being.

I'll let you know; I've noticed the phenomenon but never put it to use myself. I will do so over the next few weeks.

One thing the article isn't clear on: is the author simply staring down the other person (i.e. eye contact with no words), or is he simply maintaining eye contact while speaking to them?

If the former I'd certainly think that's hostile, if the latter... well.

Isn't this a bit of a false dichotomy? There's a middle ground between being hostile and sociable. People playing a game generally aren't hostile but they do want to win. One might want to use eye contact to achieve some end result without wishing the other person ill - which a claim of hostility would connote.

This is true, every word. I can absolutely vouch for what this says.

It's quite startling the first few times you try it. Then it gets fun. It's easy to push it too far.

Eye contact alone is golden. With no words offered from me, the car salesman negotiated the price of our new car down and double the trade in of our old car.

So after his initial offer you remained silent and held eye contact, then he continued to give you a more favorable deal?

I do this every time I'm buying things with negotiable prices. My trick is to not use any eye contact until negotiation time. The surprise throws most people off their game enough to give you an advantage. Plus, it is kind of fun watching someone talk themself out of money. FYI, it doesn't work every time, typically there will be an awkward silence and I'll have to throw out an offer.

He leaves out one of the most important parts -- the slight nod of understanding that follows the eye-contact. You have to acknowledge that something was communicated.

Works even better in Japan! Now that's a society that understands non-verbal acknowledgment -- even from a foreign 16-year-old.

Pro tip: practise on babies first.

Just curious: what's with all the esquire.com articles?

I was going to say. They seem to have figured out how to milk pop psychology. I say that as someone who can't resist clicking on these articles.

I think it is has a couple factors.

First, a guy who found a site that does not have a lot of articles from it that are submitted and someone who found that the esquire is a major booster of karma.(I guess it matters to some people)

Secondly, on the weekends it only takes a few up-votes for a story to reach the front page.

All the stories were submitted by the same guy, a 3 day old account who's also submitted fastcompany, popularmechanics, and similar sites.

Are all those magazines published by the same company?

Esquire and Popular Mechanics are published by Hearst, but that's the only commonality, and enough IMO to be a coincidence.

There is quite a body of knowledge about eye contact when applied to hacking women. Viz. the original experiments by David Shade: http://www.fastseduction.com/youarenew/eyecontact.shtml - Jeans Joe's manual on eye contact mastery: http://www.jeansjoe.net/blog/?p=14 - Joseph W. South podcasts with Jeans Joe about eye contact: http://www.jeansjoe.net/download/jws.and.jj.-.eye.contact.po...

Hacking whom, now?

Jack the Ripper was a pioneer in the field, don't'cha know.

It's funny that "The National Association of Staredown Professionals" mentioned at the bottom of the article is a real organization. I wonder what their meetings are like?

They all blankly stare at each other...

Oh gosh. I searched for it on wikipedia and when it wasn't found I thought: "Yeah, I should have known that it's a joke". I should really get out of this "If it's not on wikipedia, it doesn't exist" mindset. I should at least make a google search next time...

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