Scientists show how we read intentions from one another's gazes
PARIS : It's often said the eyes are the mirror of the soul. Another well-known phrase is: 'I see it in your eyes.' This reflects the fact that sight is the predominant human sense: we have a natural tendency to scrutinise the eyes of others, seeking to detect their emotions or intentions.
With this in mind, researchers at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, have studied how our eyes can convey our intentions, without the need for words.
To gain a deeper understanding of how glances can transmit information in social interactions, Jelena Ristic and colleagues conducted a series of experiments involving between 70 and 80 volunteers, who watched videos of people turning their gaze to the left or right.
Sometimes these eye movements were spontaneous, other times deliberately provoked. The videos stopped just before the movement took place, and the participants had to guess in which direction the eyes were going to move.
The scientists found that the rate of correct responses remained stable, but the speed of the responses increased when the eye movement was intentional, i.e. when the people on screen were free to choose the direction of their gaze.
'The speed of the observers' responses suggests that they implicitly recognise and respond more quickly to intentional eye movements. It also told us how sensitive we are to information about the mental state and intentions conveyed by the eyes,' says Florence Mayrand, a PhD candidate and the paper's first author.
In other words, participants were able to glean intentions in the eyes before any action had taken place. To explain this phenomenon, the researchers examined the micro-movements that preceded eye movements in the videos.
In the journal Communications Psychology, they observed that intentional gazes were accompanied by greater activity around the eyes, reflecting the existence of particular movement patterns. It's this subtle movement that our brains instinctively pick up on, as a kind of invisible sign of intention.
In the future, the scientists plan to accurately measure the speed, trajectory and frequency of blinking in intentional and directed looks. They would also like to determine whether these properties vary according to intention (lying, helping, fleeing), or whether sensitivity to intentions in gaze might differ in people with social difficulties, such as individuals with autism or ADHD.
There's nothing magical about reading people's eyes; it's a skill deeply rooted in us, essential to the survival of our ancestors, and still at work in our daily interactions.
Behind every shift in the gaze, an intention takes shape, and our brains often know how to decipher these intentions – without us even being aware of it.
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