Making eye contact when you are interrelating with others is very important. Eye contact is the most important physiological aspect of interrelating with others. In many ways it crosses the boundaries between internal feelings and external actions. The saying goes, “the eyes are the windows to the soul”, and truly they play a key role in how others perceive us and how we perceive them.

It is always very important that you make eye contact when you’re speaking to someone else. There are many rules about how long this eye contact should be, but this is actually a very touchy thing because even experts are not exactly sure about the length of time that you should look at someone in the eye. Most of the studies into this time frame are not broad enough and they tend to only include people in certain areas and of a certain race. It is much better that you learn to feel out for yourself how long it is that you should look straight into the eyes of someone else. These times will always be different depending on who you’re talking to, where you are, and where the person is from. It is much better that you learn to develop a personal feel for this so that you are able to create the kind of results that you want from others.

Eye contact establishes trust, creates dominance, increases mutual empathy, and develops the tone for the interaction. In order to develop the best way to know how and when to look at someone, you must develop an empathic sense, so that you can see or feel what your gaze is doing to the other person. This empathic sense is developed by paying close attention to the other people that you are interrelating with, and by trying to put yourself in their place; trying to imaginatively feel what they must be feeling as they are looking at you. If you take the time to develop this empathic technique, you will soon surprise yourself with how well you can tell what others are thinking and feeling.

Using your own empathic sense, you will know how to develop your eye contact to a very powerful level. There are times when staring is a good thing and it creates the kind of dominance that you want, there are also times when looking away creates just the kind of feeling that you want by making you seem weak. Gazing at others in just the right way makes them feel like you are interested in them, that you care about what they are saying or doing. Eye contact is an incredibly powerful tool and the shades and variations of it are too numerous to put down in a small article. All of these things must be taken into consideration when you ponder the power of eye contact in human interrelation.

If you are interested in developing the power of your gaze in interpersonal relations, I suggest that you read the two following articles:

The Power of the Eye to Persuade

Empathy