21/28 December 2019 | New Scientist | 45have something to hide or are less trustworthy.
Unless you and your conversation partner
are already in love, however, too much eye
contact can be uncomfortably intense. No one
wants to feel like they are being eyeballed.
So what is the optimum amount?
Nicola Binetti at University College London
and his colleagues fitted volunteers with eye-
trackers and asked them to watch close-up
videos of actors gazing into a camera, so it
looked as if they were staring directly into
their eyes. Most participants were happy
with a maximum of 3.3 seconds of eye contact
before they started to feel uncomfortable, a
finding that roughly fits with reports from
real-life interactions.
Shy people may find even this level of eye
contact too intimidating, but further research
has shown most people don’t notice whether
you are looking them directly in the eye or at
some nearby point on their face. Don’t worry
about breaking your gaze and focusing on
their cheek or forehead for a bit whenever
you feel uncomfortable, because this “eye
contact illusion” will still make it clear you
are listening attentively.Is that too much to ask?
I recently met up with an acquaintance
for a couple of drinks. By the end of our
conversation, I was pretty sure I could write
his biography: he told me the ins and outs of
his job, his childhood and his love life. As for
me? He asked just one question in 3 hours.
This is a common experience, says Karen
Huang at Harvard Business School, particularly
when we are first getting to know someone.
“In first encounters, the default behaviour
seems to be to want to talk about oneself, in
order to impress the other person,” she says.
It is rarely as charming as these people think.
In laboratory experiments, Huang and
her colleagues have found that the number
of questions you ask of someone during a
conversation can reliably predict how much
they like you afterwards. During a speed-dating
event, it also predicted how likely they were to
agree to a second date.
The specific type of question matters.
“Switch” questions, which alter the topic
of conversation, are less charming than
follow-ups that build on the person’s
current topic. “Follow-ups signal a kind ofinterlocutor may be having, many of which
are out of your control. Even the weather can
influence someone’s opinion of you. But you
can avoid subtle behaviours that may worsen
someone’s mood.
Consider interpersonal distance. We have all
met people who get too close for comfort, but
you don’t want to feel like you are shouting
across a football pitch, either. The optimum
space while conversing, according to a study
of nearly 9000 people in 42 countries, ranges
from about 40 centimetres to three times that,
depending on the person’s culture and the
nature of the relationship between you,
among other factors (see “Move closer”, p 46).
In the research, conducted by a team at the
University of Wroclaw, Poland, the closest
talkers were found in Argentina and Norway,
where people were happy to chat to someone
they knew well with just 40 cm between them,
about the amount of space you’d need to
squeeze in a beach ball. In the UK, about 99 cm
is preferred for a complete stranger. That is
around the width of a kitchen table. Between
acquaintances, the ideal distance is about
81 cm, and for close friends, this falls to 56 cm.
That is just about enough room for you to
both comfortably hold your plates of canapés
without them touching. People in the US
seem to be comfortable with slightly cosier
encounters: they are happy to be about 95 cm
from a stranger, 69 cm from an acquaintance
and 48 cm from a close friend. If you are
visiting Romania, however, be sure to keep
any new associate at much more than arm’s
length, as people there generally prefer to
leave around 140 cm between strangers.
These aren’t rigid rules, so don’t take a
tape measure to each meeting, but do try
to consider whether you regularly overstep
those invisible boundaries.The greatest form of flattery
As all comedians know, one of the easiest ways
to ridicule someone is to mimic them – hardly
a good way to make friends at a party. Yet
subtler imitations of someone’s mannerisms
can lay the foundations of a good rapport. The
aim is to reduce the psychological distance
between people, essentially by sending a
signal that you are more similar than different.
It is now well established that mirroring
someone’s posture and facial expressions
can help to nurture a shared bond and
increase cooperation between people. Less
well known is the fact that subtly imitating
someone’s voice, by mimicking accent, pitch
or speed of speech, can also work in your
favour. Even simply repeating or paraphrasing
someone’s words back to them can create a
sense of bonhomie.
The benefits go both ways: the person
doing the mirroring will feel more positive
and empathetic towards the person they are
imitating, and the person being imitated will
feel more friendly and cooperative in return.Look into my eyes
The eyes are said to be the windows to the
soul, and for good reason, as eye contact
helps us read emotions more accurately.
That is probably why we find it so
disconcerting when someone avoids our
gaze: it makes them seem as though they >“ Don’t worry about breaking your gaze
and looking at someone’s cheek for a bit”