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When And How To Use The Eyebrow Flash

by  • March 5, 2013 • 0 Comments

Some recent research has shown that the eyebrow flash is most effective when it takes place between people who are already acquainted, but it can also be effective amongst potential suitors. Over a crowded room, the eyebrow flash can express interest and curiosity in someone of the opposite sex and can even make someone believe that you have already met and so create familiarity. That being the case, the eyebrow flash can also be taken as offensive, create anxiety or even hostility, and put people off if no natural attraction is present. Therefore, the eyebrow flash can be risky, but with someone with nothing to lose, can be neatly rewarded.

In a study by John Martin conducted in 1997 which he titled “Slaughtering a sacred cow: The eyebrow flash is not a universal social greeting” he found that the eyebrow flash was totally ineffective between strangers and sometimes even produced negative emotions. He found that people who were eye flashed keep more personal space between themselves and the flashers. The head nod and smile, he found, elicited a much better result, but a smile added to an eyebrow flash performed just as poorly. The eyebrow flash, however, was well received by those already acquainted to the flasher highlighting the importance of having a previous history with someone and reaffirming the likelihood that the greeting is a gesture amongst the familiar. Eyebrow flashes were also better received across the sexes then within the sexes. Therefore, it follows that a head nod and smile is appropriate for stranger, whereas an eyebrow flash is more effective to acquaintances.

Eyebrow Flash – The Social Greeting

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They eyebrow flash has been studied for decades most notably by German behavioural research scientist Eibl-Eibesfeldt. He found that the eyebrow flash is a universally recognized long distance social greeting. The only exception is in Japan where it is considered an overt sexual invitation and therefore inappropriate. For everyone else the eyebrow flash in a sort of nonverbal “Hello” or “Hey there, I know you”. The eyebrow flash happens very briefly and lasts only about one-sixth of a second. It is a quick raising and lowering of the eyebrows. The flash normally happens over a distance of between six to twelve feet by which dialogue can not easily occur, but of which, signals to another party that you have recognized them. The video of Fergie and Prince Andrew’s wedding provides a real life example of the eyebrow flash as she makes her way down the aisle.

The eyebrow flash could be a response to surprise, as if saying “Hey, I noticed you and am surprised, but also fearful because I’ve been taken off guard.” Therefore, the eyebrow flash sends the message that you aren’t a threat, since you’ve been taken by surprise. Another theory advanced says that the eyebrow flash draws attention to the face so that less ambiguous signals can be exchanged.

Research shows us that eyebrow flashes are infrequently used between individuals who are enduring strained relationships, so this can be used as a test. If you aren’t sure, try an eyebrow flashing on a colleague you’ve recently had a fight with. If the signal elicits a flash back then you have been forgiven, but if the flash is denied or you instead receive a dirty look then your transgressions are still at the forefront of their mind.

Eye contact between those in strained relationships is rigorously avoided under most circumstances, most likely so there is a reduced probability that the greeting extends to further unwanted interaction. We can therefore look at the eyebrow flash as a nonverbal conversation starter and lack thereof as a conversation avoider.

Eye Contact During A Job Interview

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Eye contact during an interview has been repeatedly found to have a powerful influence on the interviewer. Interviewees who hold good eye contact tend to receive more favourable hiring decisions, to be rated more positively and to be rated more suitable for jobs requiring self confidence.

The most appropriate types of eye contact in an interview have been shown through research to be about two to three second bursts of eye contact followed by looking away. Looking down continuously or avoiding eye contact altogether, or conversely, holding extended eye contact can all result in poor judgment. Continuous shifting of the eyes around the room can come off as dishonest and can make people think that you are expecting to be bust at anytime. For what, the interviewee doesn’t know, but he will remain suspicious nonetheless. Looking toward the door or appearing distracted by what is going on outside a window will only serve to demonstrate your lack of interest in the job position and negative feelings will be attached to you personally. Poor eye contact might also be taken by the interviewer personally and he may become offended. As interviewees, we must pay particular attention to good eye contact while listening and while speaking. Most of us are good at one, but not both, but being aware of our shortcomings is at least a good first step. So don’t dismiss good eye language in an interview and follow the patterns described above: two to three second bursts of eye contact followed by looking away.

Eye Contact In Business

by  • March 5, 2013 • 0 Comments

This isn't going well - she looks right through him.

This isn’t going well – she looks right through him.

Eye language is important in business as it can often be more indicative of intent then other body language. It can also significantly improve the chances of a sale at best, and at worst, can simply help convey better meaning and understanding. The most effective use of eye contact is in fleeting glances, which at first might seem counter-intuitive. However, prolonged eye contact can be seen as rude, untrustworthy, threatening or even aggressive. When seen in a client, it can mean that a sale is being resisted, where he or she is “staring” you down trying to find flaws in your sales pitch. Poor eye contact or prolonged periods of looking away can mean the reverse; indifference or outright disinterest. This is why brief glances followed by looking away, or at the material at hand, is most appropriate in a sale, and when done by a client, the best indication that a sales call is being well received.

The way eyes are positioned can give us indications of what a person is thinking. Generally, a person is passively receiving information if they are simply looking straight ahead and when conscientiously processing the information clients will look upward.

Here is a break-down for the complete set of eye movement patterns and what they mean as they relate to business:

1. Eyes focused straight ahead – passive receiving of information
2. Prolonged eye contact – threat and aggression or disinterest in sales pitch
3. Eyes to the right – message is being considered
4. Eyes to the left – person is relating to a past experience.
5. Eyes down – emotional concentration from an emotional thinker.
6. Extended looks away – desire to withdraw or vacate.
7. Eyes at ceiling – conscious analyzing.

By being aware of the manner in which the eyes focus, one can gauge the success or failure of the meeting, so as to either, remedy the pitch in the future or rework the meeting on the fly.

How People Learn

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Turn the music down, she's a visual learner!

Turn the music down, she’s a visual learner!

There are three main ways in which people process new information. They are auditory (spoken words), kinesthetic (touch) and visual (images). When presenting information it is important to identify which methods are most suitable because every person absorbs information in a different way and so prefers to learn through specific mediums. It is also important to realize your own unique tastes so you can satisfy your own needs and learn more effectively.

Auditory learners, those who learn primarily through spoken words make up about twenty five percent of the population. This group of people prefers to hear the information through oral presentation, lectures and speeches. Oral learners will be found playing music frequently, or will leave a television or radio in the background to stimulate them. Other oral learners will be distracted by sound so they instead run white noise machines or play nature or ocean sounds to sooth themselves. You can also identify auditory learners because they will say things like “That rings a bell”, “I hear you” or “That doesn’t sound right”.

Visual learners account for around thirty five percent of the population. They will prefer charts, maps, graphs, images and photographs. You can identify a visual learner because they will say things like “I can see that”, “I just don’t see how that’s possible” or “yes, I see, that makes perfect sense”. Obviously having at least some visual props will assist any presentation but if you are looking to impress a visual learner, the more the better.

Kinesthetic learners represent the remaining forty percent and they prefer to learn mainly by touch. They prefer to learn by doing rather than simply watching and so they take poorly to lecture situations and can exhibit a desire to move. They often want to take action before learning, and jump right in, so to speak. Kinesthetic learners can be restless or hyperactive when under-stimulated physically. These types of learner will prefer dioramas, physical models, role-playing, or reenactments. Kinesthetic learners prefer test driving ideas or building things as they learn about them. We can identify kinesthetic learners as they will often say things like “Let’s bounce that idea around”, “I can’t quite grasp that idea”, “I’m having trouble feeling that” or “Yeah I can warp my fingers around that one.” More often than not, people will learn through every channel, despite having a more preferred method. Therefore, to teach effectively, it’s important to use as many of the teaching techniques as possible, not only so you can involve the greatest percentage of people, but so that you can use more of everyone’s senses making a much more diverse and powerful presentation.

Using The Eye Trick To Predict Things

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What's she thinking?

What’s she thinking?

To apply the psychic NLP eye trick examine where people look as they attempt to recollect or express their thoughts. For most right-handed people, eye movement up and to the left is a signal that one is accessing a visual memory whereas movement up and right means that a person is trying to construct a visual image. Eyes either right or left, but still level, indicate an auditory process such as remembering sounds and words. Eyes down and left indicate internal dialogue or self talk, and down and right indicate a tactile or visceral feeling. When the eyes are straight ahead, unfocused or dilated, they signal that visual or sensory information is being accessed.

These eye patterns appear to be consistent for all right handed people throughout the world except for a few minor exceptions. Many left handed people though tend to reverse from left to right and access information opposite to right handed people. Therefore, they tend to look down and left to access feelings instead of up and left.

These patterns can provide us with information that have predictive powers. By watching and reading the eye direction of other people we can draw inferences about how they are accessing the information which can be particularly helpful when trying to determine their intentions. Lie detection comes first to mind, but we can also deduce how one is internalizing thought by what their eyes are doing. As it pertains to lying, for example, right and up (constructed visual) and right and level (constructed auditory) both show that a person is trying to create or imagine new details about something whereas left and up (visual remembered) and left and level (auditory remembered) indicating that a person is remembering something that had actually happened.

A word of caution though is that it is not all that easy to follow someone’s eyes and some of the expressions last just fractions of seconds. Not only this, but people can access multiple parts of their brain to recall the similar ideas. Some people also have habitual eye movements that have developed over time so a person that is highly visual might look up and left, or right, regardless of the type of question being asked. Someone who is kinesthetically oriented might look down and right all the time even in reference to a thought about music or sound. However, even these cues can give us indications of the
types of mind they have and therefore the type of person they are. By using eye gaze in NLP we can better tailor presentations to key in on more visual or auditory elements as required by our listeners.

Here is a list of questions to help determine what type of learner you are working with in order to better help you tailor information:

Eye Access Cues.

Eye Access Cues.

1) Visual Remembered: Think of the colour of your first bicycle. Think of the first person you saw as you entered the office this morning.
2) Visual Construction: Imagine what it would be like to fly. Imagine your dream home and pretend you are entering through the front door, what do you see?
3) Auditory Remembered: What was one of your most favourite things your parents have ever said to you? What types of sounds do you most enjoy?
4) Auditory Constructed: What would a rabbit sound like it if could talk? What would your boss say if he knew you were stealing office supplies?
5) Auditory Digital (Internal Self Talk): What does the sound of your inner voice make? What kind of dialogue happens when you think of your spouse and children? When do you find you talk to yourself the most?
6) Kinesthetic Remembered (Tactile and Emotional): Imagine what sandpaper feels like against your skin. Imagine what a cat feels like as you pet it. Think of a time in your life when you felt you had accomplished something that made you proud. When was the last time you were completely exhausted?
7) Kinesthetic Construction (Tactile and Emotional): Imagine the feeling of sand between your fingers that gradually turned sticky instead of rough. Imagine the feeling of helplessness turned into empowerment.

Eye Direction, Thought And NLP

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Eye movements are well known in neuro-linguistic programming abbreviated NLP, a system developed to help induce behavioural changes and improve communication between colleagues as well as to retrain thinking in business. It was developed in the 1970s by two researches in California, Richard Bandler and John Grinder who noted that the predominant research into human behaviour focused on problems rather than on solutions. NLP rather, focuses on the behaviour of successful people and is thought that by copying them, others too, can be successful. “Neuro” refers to the fives senses (hearing, touch, smell, sight, taste) “Linguistic” refers to the use of language to order thought and behaviour and “Programming” reflects the way ideas and thought are organized into actions. NLP is driven by defining positive outcomes, understanding how other’s perceive particular circumstances, and in identifying the roots by which thoughts affect images, sound or feelings.

It was discovered through experiment that eye movement is related to that part of the brain people where accessing. It began when researches noticed that the brain processed different information in different hemispheres. It was found that right handed people tended to shift their heads and eyes to the right during “left hemisphere” tasks such as logical and verbal processing and left handed people had entirely opposite patterns.

A typical left-handed person would have the opposite meanings for their eye-directions.  Therefore, people tended to look to the opposite sides of the brains for the answers. Eye movements in this way, is one of the most well known but also the most controversial discoveries of NLP. It might also be one of the most valuable. The researches attached electrodes to subjects to track eye movement and brain wave characteristics. They were then asked questions related to sight, hearing or feeling tasks that involved memory or right brain processing and mental construction or left brain processing. Eye movement was shown to be related to how people process information. For example, upward eye movements reflected visual processing, lateral eye movements reflected auditory processing and downward movements reflected either kinesthetic (touch) or an inner thought or feeling.

Audience Eye Contact

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When presenting to an audience it can be intimidating to hold eye contact, but it’s a necessary condition for delivering a message effectively. Eye contact need not be met with each individual person in an extremely large audience because most people won’t be able to distinguish specific eye direction anyway. Depending on the size of the crowd and the distance at which the presenter speaks, eye contact made at one person might seem to be directed at as many as five or even fifteen people surrounding them.

To make eye contact easier when addressing a crowd, you should centre out someone that you find less intimidating as the first person to make eye contact with. As people make their way into the room and as you organize, you’ll have plenty of time to centre someone out. Generally, this person should be at the center of the audience. Next you should choose at least one person in every corner of the room from which you can jump back in forth over the course of the presentation. If you find this intimidating, you can choose inanimate objects such as an exit sign or an empty chair to focus on or you can direct your gaze above their eyes such as to their foreheads or their hair instead. Your introduction is your first impression and is therefore the most crucial time during the presentation to make eye contact.

As the size of the group grows, it becomes more difficult to make a solid connection, making eye contact even more important. The nature of addressing larger groups says that we generally address them from further away than we would a smaller group. This is especially the case for groups larger than fifty. Groups with two, to about fifteen, should make it easy to make eye contact with everyone, so a good solid attempt should be made to do just that. If you accomplish this, the impression will be the strongest possible. You never really know which people will yield the most constructive interactions at the end of your presentation, so you will want to keep all avenues open.

While answering a question be sure to hold eye contact with the inquirer directly, rather than the audience at larger, especially when you first begin to respond. If the material turns into something that is of general audience interest, feel free to resume eye contact with the rest of the people. Eye contact should be held with each audience member momentarily instead of shifting from person to person hastily. Ideally, you will shift your view from person to person to emphasis points or transitions in your speech. Your rate of speech should be slower than the rate at which you would speak to a friend since any missed information can’t be easily or quickly clarified with questions. Also be sure to vary the rate of your speech, the tone and the pitch thereby avoiding monotony.

Stealing Looks

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We’ve all done it. We’ve all checked someone out without them being aware. Even girls do it to check our rival females or a particularly hunky guy. Women think men are the only ones, but that is only because science has show us that men’s peripheral vision is so much less broad then women’s. Since women can see much more of what is going on without other’s being aware, they appear less obvious and get caught less easily. When men look, they zero in as if they are tracking a prey animal and so appear to stare. As a sexy women walks past, men’s eyes almost universally drop down to the women’s behind. However, if men could sacrifice just one gaze and keep it affixed to the women they are with, they will notice that they too have noticed the other women’s behind. The only point of difference is that while men only notice the rear end, women noticed both the rear end and also that her man’s eyes dropped to check it out! If women didn’t really notice both, how would they know what men were actually looking at!

Stealing looks can happen more discretely too. Out of the corner of our eye, we spot a sexy blonde or tall handsome man so our eyes look to the side quickly while our head remains motionless. Without skipping a beat we continue in our conversation because we don’t want to acknowledge our shallow curiousity. We might even drop our heads to inspect our hands (a slight of hand in magic) or our meal in order to divert witnesses. Then, if desired we cast our eyes back if we feel particularly compelled to act sneaky. More often though, we steal looks in an effort not to be noticed by the ones we steal from.

What is the hidden meaning behind stealing a look? The answer is simple, it’s context specific! Performed by a married man checking out attractive woman, for example, it can indicate sexual interest under secrecy. In this case, the interest is normally benign; the look is concealed such that he wants no one to know because he does not intend to pursue his interest. In other words, it’s just an idle curiosity. For a woman checking out another woman, it might indicate jealousy or competitiveness as she is seen as a rival. If it occurs in combination with down-turned eyebrows, furrowed brows, or a frown it could mean hostility, suspicion or a critical attitude. With the combination of the lips pressed firmly together it might indicate a suspicious or questioning attitude. The eyes might also be used to subtly draw the attention of our company onto the others without them being aware so we might include them in negative conversation or gossip. As in, “I heard about the new girl Julie (in a whispering voice)” then motioning twice in succession with the eyes in the direction of Julie to indicate exactly who is being spoken about. Finally, stealing looks might be simply used to satisfy a flat out curiousity of which we don’t want others from which we steal from to notice. In this case, we don’t want them to have the satisfaction of knowing that they peak our interest so it might build their confidence even further while making us appear desperate or of lower status. Obviously this is just a small list of the possible reasons for look stealing, each one being context specific and requiring additional cues to properly solve.

Looking Askance And Eye Rolling

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When the eyes roll they say - I can't be expected to focus on such a ridiculous statement.

When the eyes roll they say – I can’t be expected to focus on such a ridiculous statement.

Looking askance is a nonverbal cue that is done with the eyes and head in combination. It is done by tilting the head slightly to the side but stopping short of facing head on where the eyes roll the rest of the way forming a scowl. This face shows disapproval, distrust and suspicion. This cue is commonly associated with a disapproving mother type although this is usually in its exaggerated form. Other times the gesture happens quickly as if to say “You didn’t just say that, you better start backpedaling” or “I’ve heard what you said loud and clear, but I’m not buying what you’re selling.” Eye rolling, on the other hand spells disbelief as in “I can’t believe you just said this, you are a fool.”