New research suggests making eye contact actually might not help your case in an argument.
A research team found that people who receive intense eye contact are less likely to be persuaded, especially if they disagree, an Association for Psychological Science (APS) press release reported.
"There is a lot of cultural lore about the power of eye contact as an influence tool," lead researcher Frances Chen, who conducted the studies at the University of Freiburg, Germany, said. "But our findings show that direct eye contact makes skeptical listeners less likely to change their minds, not more, as previously believed,"
The team used brand-new eye tracking technology to conduct their research. They noticed that the more time the study participants looked into the eyes of a speaker, the less likely they were to accept the person's viewpoint on a controversial issue.
Only people who originally agreed with the speaker's position were more willing to accept what they were saying the longer the participants looked into their eyes.
In a second study, the researchers found "participants who were told to look at the speaker's eyes displayed less of a shift in attitudes than did those participants who were told to look at the speaker's mouth," the press release reported.
The group that looked at the speaker's eyes were found to be less receptive to the speaker's arguments and more difficult to persuade because they were not as willing to interact with the speaker as someone who did not focus on their eyes.
The finding shows that the result of making eye contact can change from situation to situation. When the situation is friendly, eye contact can be a sign of friendship and connection. In more hostile situations it can be seen as dominance.
"Whether you're a politician or a parent, it might be helpful to keep in mind that trying to maintain eye contact may backfire if you're trying to convince someone who has a different set of beliefs than you," co-author Julia Minson, of the Harvard Kennedy School, said.
The researchers plan to study the connection between brain activity and eye contact in the future. They also believe eye contact could lead to released stress hormones and an increased heart rate.
"Eye contact is so primal that we think it probably goes along with a whole suite of subconscious physiological changes," Chen said.
