Make Your Eyes Look Even More Intelligent

There is yet another argument for intense eye contact. In addition to awakening feelings of respect and affection, maintaining strong eye contact gives you the impression of being an intelligent and abstract thinker. Because abstract thinkers integrate incoming data more easily than concrete thinkers, they can continue looking into someone’s eyes even during the silences.

Their thought processes are not distracted by peering into their partner’s peepers.6 Back to our valiant psychologists. Yale researchers, thinking they had the unswerving truth about eye contact, conducted another study that, they assumed, would conﬁrm “the more eye contact, the more positive feelings.”

This time, they directed subjects to deliver a personally revealing monologue. They asked the listeners to react with a sliding scale of eye contact while their partners talked. The results? All went as expected when women told their personal stories to women. Increased eye contact encouraged feelings of intimacy.

But, whoops, it wasn’t so with the men. Some men felt hostile when stared at too long by another man. Other men felt threatened. Some few even suspected their partner was more interested than he should be and wanted to slug him. Your partner’s emotional reaction to your profound gaze has a biological base.

When you look intently at someone, it increases their heartbeat and shoots an adrenalinelike substance gushing through their veins.7 This is the same physical reaction people have when they start to fall in love. And when you consciously increase your eye contact, even during normal business or social interaction, people will feel they have captivated you.

Men talking to women and women talking to men or women: use the following technique, which I call “Sticky Eyes,” for the joy of the recipient—and for your own advantage. (Guys, I’ll have a man-to-man modiﬁcation of this technique for you in a moment.)

Technique:-Sticky Eyes

Pretend your eyes are glued to your conversation partner’s with sticky warm taffy. Don’t break eye contact even after he or she has ﬁnished speaking. When you must look away, do it ever so slowly, reluctantly, stretching the gooey taffy until the tiny string ﬁnally breaks.

What About Guys’ Eyes?

Now gentlemen: when talking to men, you, too, can use Sticky Eyes. Just make them a little less sticky when discussing personal matters with other men, lest your listener feel threatened or misinterpret your intentions. But do increase your eye contact slightly more than normal with men on day-to-day communications— and a lot more when talking to women.

It broadcasts a visceral message of comprehension and respect. I have a friend, Sammy, a salesman who unwittingly comes across as an arrogant chap. He doesn’t mean to, but sometimes his brusque manner makes it look like he’s running roughshod over people’s feelings. Once while we were having dinner together in a restaurant, I told him about the Sticky Eyes technique.

I guess he took it to heart. When the waiter came over, Sammy, uncharacteristically, instead of bluntly blurting out his order with his nose in the menu, looked at the waiter. He smiled, gave his order for the appetizer, and kept his eyes on the waiter’s for an extra second before looking down again at the menu to choose the main dish.

I can’t tell you how different Sammy seemed to me just then! He came across as a sensitive and caring man, and all it took was two extra seconds of eye contact. I saw the effect it had on the waiter, too. We received exceptionally gracious service the rest of the evening.

A week later Sammy called me and said, “Leil, Sticky Eyes has changed my life. I’ve been following it to a T. With women, I make my eyes real sticky and with men slightly sticky. And now everybody’s treating me with such deference.

I think it’s part of the reason I’ve made more sales this week than all last month!” If you deal with customers or clients in your professional life, Sticky Eyes is a deﬁnite boon to your bottom line.

To most people in our culture, profound eye contact signals trust, knowledge, an “I’m here for you” attitude. Let’s carry Sticky Eyes one step further. Like a potent medicine that has the power to kill or cure, the next eye-contact technique has the potential to captivate or annihilate.

Also, read

How to Always Have Something Interesting to Say

How to Meet the People You Want to Meet

How to Make Someone Feel Like an Old Friend at Once