The eyes communicate powerful cognitive messages in business communication and human interaction.
Let’s get back to our childhood. When a mother stares into her baby’s eyes, the baby’s oxytocin levels rise; this causes the infant to stare back into its mother’s eyes, which, in turn, causes the mother to release more oxytocin, and so on. This positive feedback loop seems to create a strong emotional bond between mother and child during a time when the baby can’t express itself in other ways.
The importance of eye contact for communication and interaction can be demonstrated by a research, which shows that when our canine pals stare into our eyes, they activate the same hormonal response that bonds us to human infants. People and dogs often look into each other’s eyes while interacting—a sign of understanding and affection.
Here, mutual gazing has a profound effect on both the dogs and their owners. During a research experiment, of the duos that had spent the greatest amount of time looking into each other’s eyes, both male and female dogs experienced a 130% rise in oxytocin levels, and both male and female owners a 300% increase.
The experiment results above suggest that human-dog interactions including eye contact elicit the same type of oxytocin positive feedback loop as seen between mothers and their infants.
Eye contact generates oxytocin, a hormone that plays a role in gaining trust. Since trust is the foundation of effective business communication, we should never underestimate our ability to persuade with our eyes.
drjohnxwang 