Vanessa Van Edwards explores why eye contact divides people: some find it distracting, others need it to connect. She questions the claim that you need lots of eye contact to be likable and asks whether people who avoid it can still be perceived as warm.
What's something that you think to be true but don't have the research to support it?
There's a big fight on the internet right now about eye contact. We're careful about talking about eye contact because eye contact is very difficult for certain people. Eye contact is distracting for certain people, and other people need eye contact. I have not been able to find the research to answer this question, which is like, how much eye contact do we need? Can we manufacture it? If someone doesn't want to make eye contact, can they be likable? The research right now says no, but I don't think that's true. I think that you can still be likable if you're not making 100% or 60% eye contact. But there's no answer right now, and I think people are really distracted by it because it's such a huge part of our interaction. If you don't like eye contact because it's distracting for you, what could you do to make up for it? Could you make up for it? That's a hard one.
