Eye Contact

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While trying to reserarch why oxytocin was effecting my eyes I came across this on
eye contact:

http://happybrainstorm.com/eye-contact/

Here is short quote

I would put my eye contact at single digit percents to close to zero.

Anyway you can read the artical and see how the lack of eye contact alone can have lots of problems associated with it.

I would have thought it would be the other way round. That you should look at someone's eyes more when listening to them than speaking to them.

may i ask, why? thanks.

Boy, if I maintained eye contact that long, I would feel really uncomfortable and I would probably be doing it wrong somehow, anyhow.

Now that I think of it, I've also (subconsciously) chosen people to be around who do not make great eye contact either, even as NTs. It seems to me that the more bubbly a person is, the more they like to look straight at your face when they're talking. And in spite of what I said above, I've noticed that in job interviews (at which I am apparently remarkably good), I can seem to pull off proper eye contact. And nobody ever told me to do so... I never even thought about it--somehow I just knew I should attempt. It takes a lot of energy out of me though.

Thanks for sharing the article.

OMG! That much!
I was having doubts about my self diagnosis because I was catching myself looking at peoples eyes and holding it for what seemed like a long time (probably 10 seconds tops, now that I think about it) before looking somewhere else and then looking back. This was with my family and very familiar family friends though. I guess I am really clueless on the subject of eye contact. I figure my eye contact is maybe 10-15%.
Although at school I can pretty much lock my view onto the teacher's eyes for a long time. Until they look at me that is. But in that case it isn't really a conversation, but just me listening to the lecture.
I always thought either I sucked at explaining things or the other person was pretty dumb. Maybe it is just those NTs expecting nonverbal communication along with the verbal to fully understand.
I find it is not too hard to look at someone's eyes if they are looking somewhere else, but as soon as they look to me my eyes seem to dart away involuntarily. I guess it is just looking into someone else's eyes that is hard to do.

like KClark, I felt I tended to stare at people when in conversation - in my case, in a vain attempt to concentrate solely on their message (too much going on elsewhere usually), and would put them off anyway; but I saw a new Dr yesterday and she asked me straightout (well after half an hour or so) why I only looked at her when she was asking a question and then looked away - all over the room apparently).

I said I only I suppose needed to look at her when I was waiting for a question, once I'd "received and assimilated " it then I thought about a suitable response; I guess I was habitually (I wasn't aware I was doing it even after it had been pointed out) looking away to save seeing confusing facial/body signals [aren't they so ambiguous?] whilst I sorted myself out. I said I didn't really need to look at her in conversation anyway, in fact it would help if she weren't directly in front of me. So, as an experiment, (having accepted how literal-minded I am) she said as an experiment she'd turn around and carry on talking, which she did, and of course, I was perfectly happy (it was like reading a book) and we chatted awhile.

Unfortunately, after a few minutes, she said she really couldn't cope like this, and turned around again.


Michaelmas

I use eye contact fairly well with doctors and such, at least... I thought I did until I told my therapist about why I hold eye contact fairly well. Since then I can't look at him-isn't that strange??? But I told him since I went there for help, I felt obligated to look at him while he spoke, and that with people I see every day, I rarely even face in their direction because... well, I always assumed they feel that need to have you look at them while they talk. So I just turn around and do whatever I was doing while I try to listen instead-that way if I don't catch what they are saying I can just blame it on the other thing, and ask them to repeat, lol.

Shortly after I told my therapist about this though, I spaced out staring at the doorstopper in the room for probably 10 minutes while he talked to me, and eventually caught myself and explained that I wasn't paying any attention at all.

When I do manage to maintain eye contact, it looks like my face is twitching. Have you ever seen the airplanes on that show "Jay Jay the Airplane"? Well, those creepy airplane faces resemble mine a LOT while trying to hold eye contact with someone.

eye contact is very bad. when I look into peoples eyes it feels like they are sucking out my soul.
i hate it when poeple at me.

I'd want sources on the exact percent you're supposed to use.

A bunch of us on here were talking about this a few weeks back, and quite a few of us think we do pretty well, but have to manually think about how much we're supposed to look at the person, look away, etc. One person even said they use the majority of their brain power accomplishing that-and a bunch of us agreed that we wish we knew the exact correct percentage!

I really can't say how much it's affected me, and I try to do eye contact anyway when it's supposed to be appropriate. It's not like I ever ask anyone out anyway, so...

I've gotten to the point where I can make eye contact most of the time when someone is speaking to me, if it's someone I feel comfortable with. I've really been working on it, because it's always been hard to pay attention to what someone is saying when I am focusing on maintaining eye contact (which is very effortful and stressful).
When I'm speaking, the best I can manage is fleeting eye contact, 1 second at most.

Roughly the same here, when speaking to those outside my family.

I get worried sometimes that people will think I am lying. Sometimes I even get to feeling guilty when I am speaking to someone without looking at him directly, as if I really were lying! (and I don't lie) Anybody else ever feel like that?

Yeah, I've had that concern. I know that some people judge your honesty by how well you look them in the eye. Well, sorry, I am extremely honest, but eye contact is difficult. I wish so much of language wasn't transmitted nonverbally! We're all at such a disadvantage!

Crap I thought it was lower. Time to update the mainframe.

I had a discussion about this with a freind yesterday, it started when I realised we hadn't even looked at each others faces really for about 10 minutes of talking.
He only uses eyecontact when it is either a love interest, or trying to put a point across very agrresively. Is it maybe a misconception, and nobody uses eye contact?
90% seems ridiculously high,