6 Ways To Use The Power of Eye Contact To Get

Dates And Have More Sex

Eye contact can be your most potent seduction weapon. And at certain parties, eye
contact is your only weapon.

Men's Health | 17 March 2012

Eye-gazing parties work the same way as speed dating, with one eye-catching difference:
while the 45-minute session is still divided up into two-minute face-to-face sessions with
each woman, no talking is allowed. It’s just you, her, and 120 seconds of looking into each
other’s eyes.

Sounds awkward, right? But eye-gazing parties are becoming increasingly popular, and
scientific research shows that eye contact is indeed far more powerful than a great
opening line or a charming story.

In 1998, American psychologist Art Aron brought dozens of couples (men and women
who’d never met before) together in his lab at New York State University. There he asked
them to look into each other’s eyes for two minutes without saying a word. The results
were astounding.

Afterwards, the overwhelming majority of test subjects reported feeling extremely

attracted to their test partner. (One of the couples even got married a year later.)

Now it’s probably not a good idea to first stare silently and intently into the eyes of the first
beautiful stranger you encounter in the Pick n Pay… unless you want to make the wrong
kind of impression entirely. But experiments have shown that there’s plenty you can do
with eye contact – provided you use it the right way and in the right situation.

Social psychologist Ischa van Straaten of Radboud University in Nijmegen, the

Netherlands, has spent time researching this phenomenon. “There are certain unwritten
rules which you must respect,” he says. “And there are also clear differences in how men
and women respond to it. But if you know those rules, they’ll definitely help you in
situations where you’re able to make eye contact.”

Tip #1: Take The Initiative

Waiting for her to initiate eye contact with you isn’t just swak, it’s also uneconomical. A
University of Aberdeen study showed that women (and indeed men) regard someone who
explicitly seeks out eye contact with them as being “more interesting” and “better” than
other people.

Neurological research backs that up. In 2001, English scientist Chris Fith showed
hundreds of people pictures of faces staring directly at them. He then took brain scans of
the subjects, and every scan registered activity in the region of the subject’s brain that
normally produces dopamine when we’re rewarded for something. In other words, most
people react to eye contact as they would react to receiving a gift.

This makes plenty of sense to Dutch researcher Ischa van Straaten. “You can compare
it to other social situations,” he says. “If you hear through the grapevine that someone in
your immediate circle likes you, then you’d probably see her in a totally different way – as
a potential love partner. The same goes for eye contact. If someone looks at you, it makes
you curious. And most people also just feel flattered when someone shows interest in
them.

“But it’s also true that a lot of eye contact between men and women comes about
because of a small non-verbal cue from woman – something like a quick glance or running
her a hand through her hair. Men think they’re the ones initiating the contact, but often
that’s not the case.”

Tip #2: Look, Don’t Leer

The way you look at a woman will determine the outcome of your eye contact. Sounds
obvious, but a smile works wonders. And you don’t score any points for sneaking a glance
out of the corner of your eye.

Again we turn to the University of Aberdeen, where psychologist Claire Conway showed
photos of men to hundreds of test subjects. Some of the men were casting sidelong
glances at the camera (i.e. at the woman), while others looked straight into the lens. While
the differences between the pictures were sometimes very small, all the test subjects said
that they found the men more attractive if they looked straight ahead – even if they had
an angry or disgusted expression on their faces. The men who looked directly into the
camera and smiled had the most success.

Tip #3: Use Your Brows

Want to raise your chances of a good first impression? Then raise your eyebrows. You’re
probably already doing it to people you know, without even realising it: raising your
eyebrows for a tenth of a second in what social psychologists like Kate Fox, of London’s
Social Issues Research Centre, call an “eyebrow-flash”.

“If you are desperate to attract the attention of an attractive stranger across a crowded
party, you could try an eyebrow-flash,” Fox writes in a study titled, promisingly, The SIRC
Guide To Flirting. (If you’re interested, it’s available online at sirc.org).

“This should make your target think that you must be a friend or acquaintance, even
though he or she does not recognise you. When you approach, your target may thus
already be wondering who you are. You can, if you are skilful, use this confusion to initiate
a lively discussion about where you might have met before.”

But do yourself a favour, and try not to bust out the tired old “Do I know you from
somewhere?” line…

Tip #4: Don’t Be Discouraged

What? No visible signs of success after you’ve exchanged glances with that beautiful
stranger? Don’t give up. As with so many things, women have a completely different
approach to eye contact than men do.

For example, women tend to make more eye contact in daily life. But when a woman
encounters someone she finds attractive, the chances are she’ll not be quite so
forthcoming with the inviting glances.

That’s what Van Straaten found in a recent study where he monitored how male and
female subjects responded to intimate eye contact. “We regularly do experiments where
we see how men and women behave as they sit opposite each other for five minutes,” he
says. “It should be noted that men who find someone attractive, almost immediately make
more eye contact and signal that they’re interested. In women this isn’t the case.

“Some of our female subjects will tell us afterwards that they were in fact attracted to the
man – but you’d almost never say so judging by their reaction during the actual
experiment. They don’t make eye contact or smile any more than usual. At least, not in
the first five minutes.

“That’s not to say that you should continue to try to make eye contact if she doesn’t
respond. But I’m fairly certain that if you maintain eye contact for longer than five minutes,
then even an interested woman will finally give you a positive response.”

Tip #5: Don’t Overdo It

Of course, there is also such a thing as being too enthusiastic with your eye contact. (And
five minutes of staring into her eyes definitely qualifies as “too enthusiastic”.) Once you’ve
initiated conversation, it’s a good idea to occasionally look away. Most people will turn
their gaze almost automatically when it’s their turn to speak, because viewing and
interpreting a face takes up a lot of brain activity.

Case in point: a recent experiment at the University of Stirling in England found that
subjects who maintain continuous, uninterrupted eye contact with a partner will provide
less accurate answers to simple questions. So your chances of making a good impression
by constantly staring at her during a conversation are, it’s fair to say, minimal. And it’s
also pretty damn creepy.

“To show interest while your target is speaking, you need to look at his/her face about
three-quarters of the time, in glances lasting between one and seven seconds,” Fox writes
in her study. ” The person speaking will normally look at you for less than half this time,
and direct eye contact will be intermittent, rarely lasting more than one second. The most
common mistake people make when flirting is to overdo the eye contact in a premature
attempt to increase intimacy. This only makes the other person feel uncomfortable, and
may send misleading signals. Some men also blow their chances by carrying on a
conversation with a woman’s breasts, rather than looking at her face.”

Tip #6: Look To The Long Term

Eye contact isn’t just a way to break the ice with someone you’re meeting for the first
time. Even after a long relationship, you’ll still reap the benefits of regularly looking your
partner in the eyes.

Want proof? Then consider the famous experiment by Harvard psychologist Zick Rubin.
In 1970 Rubin created a “love scale” by which couples who’d been together for several
years reported how intense, exciting and loving their relationship was. After giving each
couple a score based on their responses, Rubin then sent the couples to a room where
cameras monitored their eye movements. Rubin found that the couples who were still
deeply in love looked each other 75% of the time while talking. (In normal conversation,
people look each other in the eye only 30-60% of the time.) The couples in Rubin’s
experiment who made the least eye contact seemed, quite literally, to be looking
elsewhere for their excitement.