Importance Of Holding Eye Contact

Holding Eye Contact: How To Make Others Uncomfortable Instantly

Conformity is the tendency to align one's beliefs, attitudes, and actions with those around them. In most cases, this is acting in agreement with socially accepted standards, conventions, or behaviors. In other cases, conformity is changing or altering an appearance, action, or even mindset to position oneself in the same manner as another person or group. Conformity can be overt or subtle- everyone conforms both consciously and subconsciously. Indeed, sometimes we confirm without knowing that we are even doing so, as conformity is a daily part of our lives. The subculture of conformity I grew up in was a play on the normal ideas of conformity. My group was of the conformers

For most of my childhood and teenage years, I would follow what my friends did, and wouldn’t argue against group ideas or thinking. Later in high school, I began to break more norms. Doing so became easier for several reasons, as I thought more about what I wanted to do, and less about what others thought of me, I started to question the validity of some social norms, and because, sometimes, breaking a norm was more helpful in my life. The norms I broke varied- sometimes I dyed my hair bright colors (a shock to my family and friends); sometimes I switched out of classes, such as calculus, that I didn’t like, though they were “smarter” classes; sometimes I went up to people I didn’t know very well and started a conversation, though I sometimes receive strange looks. As I got older, active conformity became less important to me- if I was consciously making the decision to do something I didn’t want to, just to follow with a group, I tried not to do that thing. The social norm I decided to break was eye contact. When people speak to each other, they rarely look into each other's eyes for continuous periods of time. I decided to test how uncomfortable people would be if I didn’t break eye contact with them. I set about testing this in two ways: first, I made sure I was never the first to break eye contact. Second, when having a conversation with someone, I looked into their eyes

For the people I conversed with, their actions would usually begin with casual attempts to get me to look away. At first, they’d flick their eyes away from mine, or look somewhere else. When they looked back, they’d have a brief flash of confusion- I could see them wondering why I was still staring at them. They’d continue talking, and the eye movement would increase. Several people lost their train of thought, and a few even stopped speaking. One person started sweating, and a few asked if there was something on their face. The conversations grew awkward, and people tried to excuse themselves. I hadn’t realized quite the effect eye contact could have on people’s comfort levels- evidently, it’s terrifying.

When meeting eyes with people without conversations, I still didn’t break eye contact. Interestingly enough, every person I stared at broke eye contact within a few seconds. A few people looked confused, but everyone- my boss, a teacher, classmates, a barista- all looked away first. Several of them looked confused, and a few of them stared at me afterward, as if trying to figure out what was going