The Definitive Book of Body LanguageAn old cliche says, 'Look a person in the eye when you talk
to them' when you are communicating or negotiating, but it's
better to practise 'looking them in the pupil' as the pupils will
tell you their real feelings.Humans are the only primates that have whites of the eye,
known as the sclera — apes' eyes are completely dark. The
white of the eye evolved as a communication aid to allow
humans to see where other people were looking, because direc-
tion is linked to emotional states. Women's brains have more
hardwiring than men's to read emotions, and one consequence
of this is that women have more white of the eye than men.
Apes lack eye-whites, which means that their prey don't know
Giving Them the EyeDr Simon Baron-Cohen at Cambridge University conducted
some tests where subjects were shown photographs in which
only a narrow strip of the face across both eyes was visible.
The subjects were asked to choose between mental states
expressed in the photographs such as 'friendly', 'relaxed',
'hostile' and 'worried' and attitudes such as 'desire for you'
and 'desire for someone else'.
Statistically, pure guesswork would result in half the answers
being correct but men's average score was 19 out of 25 while
women scored 22 out of 25. This test shows that both sexes
have a greater ability to decode eye signals than body signals
and that women are better at it than men. Scientists don't yet
know how this eye information is sent or decoded, they simply
know that we can do it. Autistic people - who are nearly all
males - scored the lowest. Autistic brains lack the ability to
read people's body language and this is one reason why autis-
tic people have difficulty in forming social relationships, even
though many have very high IQs.Women Are Better at It, as Usual