In other words, eye contact makes us more socially aware and empathetic.
This has obvious evolutionary benefits for detecting and discerning potential mates and predators. It’s a sort of primal awareness and why you sometimes feel someone is looking at you before you turn and see them. Think of it as a cognitive jump-start that occurs whenever you lock eyes with another person, whether in front of you or across a crowded room.Įven the brains of legally blind people have been shown to light up when someone looks them in the eye. Only actual eye contact fully activates those parts of the brain that allow us to more acutely and accurately process another person’s feelings and intentions. “But it doesn’t have the same effect, weight or import.” This is alarming in a society where people increasingly spend more time looking at their mobile devices than at one another.Įmoticons on texts and emails, like cartoon characters on cereal boxes, “may be an unconscious effort to have eye contact,” said Atsushi Senju, a cognitive neuroscientist who studies the biological and cultural aspects of eye contact at Birkbeck, the University of London’s Center for Brain and Cognitive Development. Rather than cause and effect, the hypothesis is that the relationship between less eye contact and psychological problems is circular and reinforcing. Researchers have also found that children and adults who avoid or are denied eye contact are more likely to suffer from depression and feelings of isolation as well as exhibit antisocial traits such as callousness. “Making eye contact even with a character on a cereal box inspires powerful feelings of connection,” said Brian Wansink, a professor at Cornell’s Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management and the director of the school’s Food and Brand Lab, and one of the study’s authors. In a creepy corollary, the researchers found that the eyes of characters on boxes of cereal marketed to kids were directed downward, and can meet the upward gaze of children in grocery store aisles. In a study published last month in the journal Environment and Behavior, researchers at Cornell University manipulated the gaze of the cartoon rabbit on Trix cereal boxes and found that adult subjects were more likely to choose Trix over competing brands if the rabbit was looking at them rather than away. The reason they are there may have more do with your subconscious craving for eye contact than the taste of the products. Look inside your kitchen cabinet and odds are you have a collection of old friends gazing back at you - the Quaker Oats man, the Sun-Maid girl, Aunt Jemima and maybe a Keebler elf or two.