Eye Contact

Imagine a moment when you lock eyes with someone else. What do you feel when you think about that?

If you’re anything like me, it’s not nothing. It could be a brief flash in a crowd—just a split second, but I mark that moment as significant, even if it really isn’t. Something about that gaze intrigues you, makes you curious, or just plain upsets you.

Why should eye contact do this to us? I mean, it’s not like those emotions they’re projecting can spread to us, right?

Erm…

It turns out that this is pretty much exactly what happens. Inside of each of our brains, there is a central processing system of sorts that handles our emotions, memories, and motivations. This little hub is buried deep within the structure of your brain, and it’s called the limbic system.

This little brain box is made up of smaller structures that all play important roles, but we’ll focus on the amygdala and the hypothalamus.

Our friend the amygdala is important for survival. It helps us to scan and quickly identify potential threats, and if there’s a reason to run away, we don’t want to consider alternative plans for too long. That’s where emotions come into play.

If you see something that might kill you, there’s a response that kicks in, aptly called fight or flight. You’ve got to decide which of those two options seems best in that moment, assuming you’ve already decided that this is, in fact, a threat.

To address threats, the amygdala needs to enlist the endocrine system, the producer of all those great emotion-causing chemicals. It can’t talk directly to the endocrine system, though. Instead, it needs this guy from Office Space, whose job may or may not be secure:

That’s where the hypothalamus comes in. This little almond-sized nugget makes sure the right stressors are sent to the right places.

Why human eye contact, though? Well, clearly not all humans are friendly, and it pays to make a quick assessment of intention before getting too close to someone else. This was infinitely more important when there weren’t things like legal codes or language.

Since some humans were threats, our limbic system worked on identifying a look of malice with a particular feeling. It’s not impossible for someone to cover up their malicious intentions, but if they’re showing clearly, that fight or flight response gets triggered.

So, that explains why we feel anger or fear when we see anger, but how can we explain the positive woo you can feel from a more favorable gaze?

If you stare deep into the eyes of your significant other, you’re activating that same amygdala, but this time it’s not freaking out. Instead, it has interpreted the stare not as “come at me, bro”, but as “come hither.”

Ever hear of the psychological process of mirroring? It’s often presented as a trick to earn someone’s confidence: if they’re sitting cross-legged, you can also sit cross-legged in order to seem more similar to them.

However, there’s much more to mirroring. You will often take on the mannerisms and postures of someone you like or admire without even realizing it. This happens at a subconscious level, and once your amygdala has given the person the thumbs up, the prefrontal cortex goes to work, deciding which set of chemicals come next.

In turn, the pituitary gland squirts out oxytocin, causing a bit of euphoria in the viewer. This sensation is every bit as physical or real as if you felt buzzed after drinking or on top of the world after a good workout. Oxytocin makes you feel good.

Making the same movements at the same time also causes very specific mirror neurons to fire. These neurons have evolved precisely for this exact purpose, and we primates are experts at mimicking one another. Mirroring itself acts like a positive feedback loop, causing even more oxytocin to be released.

There’s one more truly incredible thing about eye contact I have to share with you. It’s what happens when you go beyond just syncing up movements and activities.

Even your brain waves can sync up during eye contact.

No, really! When your emotions and physical actions line up, this opens the door for your brain waves to begin to match up. Now, I talked quite a bit about being on the same wavelength as someone recently, but I was referring to all of the signals constantly passing through the room you’re in right now, like a radio broadcast from Tokyo or a TV show from your local station.

The brain waves don’t travel across space and infect the other person’s head, but instead, because you’re both doing all that mimicking, the waves start to match up all on their own, doing another sort of mimicking.

If you’ve ever seen a sports team really clicking when they play together, there’s a very good chance that their brain waves are in sync. This makes communication way, way smoother—a quick glance at another player sends the message, complete with context.

Yesterday, I wrote about metronomes syncing up, all on their own, by way of vibrations from the other metronomes. It’s a very interesting corollary to today’s piece, in case you missed it:

Spontaneous synchronization is surprisingly common in nature. You’ll find yourself talking at the same pace as another person without noticing it, or you’ll match your steps to their steps, so your left foot lands right as theirs does. And don’t get me started on the contagious effects of yawning!

Have you noticed this sort of synchronization happening whenever you look someone in the eye? Have you played on a sports team that clicked, or worked with some folks where everything just gelled?