Gerald W. Grumet, the author of the article “Eye Contact: The Core of Interpersonal Relatedness,” explains the importance of eye contact in social interaction and interpersonal relationship. According to Grumet, eye contact is usually a first step in interpersonal engagement. It may be true in most of situations as you interact with people first time. I can think of a particular instance of this. As I study myself at the Starbucks, I often happen to interact with people there. Normally, I first have eye contact with the person before we start a conversation, even though I'm always not the one who first approach to them.
However, I found the statement about the survival rule regards to eye contact in the article very interesting. According to Grumet, people avoid eye contact to assure safety. Grument used an example from Baker's article from New York Times: "... the rule of survival is never look anyone in the eye." Baker used people in New York as an example and said "... there are a million people on every street corner and not one of them will give you so much at a glance. Those million people are not being coldblooded. Just surviving." When I traveled to the USA with my mom first time during my childhood, we accidently took a wrong bus which led us to a real ghetto area. In retrospect, it was such an intimidating experience. There were all black people all around us and they kept looking at us. My mom told me not to look or stare at people there. We attempted to avoid an eye contact to assure of our safety.
Grumet also noted that there is a difference between staring and looking, mainly staring is not a response to another person's behavior as looking is. Staring is something that the receiver cannot ignore. When I walk through the underground at WLC, people often stare at me. I have no idea whether it is because of my ethnicity or how I dress. Somehow, people just stare at me. It actually makes me really uncomfortable, so I respond by walking without making eye contact and looking at something, other than the person.
The article also describes that a feature of eye contact is the ability to transmit instant and meaningful information to the receiver. One function of eye contatct mentioned by Grumet is to convey menace. This type of eye communication is very effective in many situations such as on football field, in a debate, etc.
Eye contact also plays an important role as an indication of how in love a couple is. The article says that the more they look into each other's eyes, the more in love they seem to be. I don't think that it is possible to love someone and not to share a great deal of eye contact with him or her. Eye acts as an indication of the person's emotion. When you love someone else and want to express the feeling toward the person, what would you do? I think most o us would utilize the power of eye contact.
Grumet also explains that relationship between interpersonal communication and eye contact: "Eye contact is an essential avenue in the quest for comprehension." Lacking eye contact has something to do with an effective communication. When the conversation that is lacking eye contact, it is considered as ineffective. I think it is interesting that women generally give more eye contact than men in conversations. According to the article, "Women looked at their partners 94% of the time while they were listening, and men, 82% of the time." This statement really applies to me. In many situations, I believe that eye contact is really important, especially in interpersonal communication. Since one of my strengths is sympathy, I personally often exploits the power of eye contact - "eyes are the windows to the soul." In the article, Grumet also emphasized the importance of eye contact in interpersonal communication. Apparently, lacking eye contact makes people feel that they are less fully participating in conversations.
I also found the cultural factor function interesting. It is known that many nonverbal behaviors communicate different things to people in different countries. Eye contact is one of the important means of nonverbal communication. Grumet said that staring is not appropriate for certain groups like Japanese and Americans but intense eye contact is an acceptable behavior for Arabs and Greeks. It is interesting to know that the intense eye contact is considered as a sign of sincerity in those countries. When I read this part of an article, I thought about eye contact culture in my country, Japan. I believe that Japanese people do not really appreciate too direct eye contact. Japanese don't necessary look at their eyes all the time while they are talking. Even Japanese do make direct eye contact depending on situations, direct eye contact is just not accustomed for Japanese in daily life. It is just uncomfortable because, in Japan, we are suppose to look away or down at some point I remember when I came to the state first time, I often felt weird and uncomfortable because people just looking at my eyes whole time while I was talking. It is not considered as rude but it's just weird. In addition, I observed two American guys having conversations at the Starbucks while I was writing this assignment. It was really fascinating because they just kept looking at their eyes each other almost whole time while they were talking, even every time they had a sip of coffee.
However, I found the statement about the survival rule regards to eye contact in the article very interesting. According to Grumet, people avoid eye contact to assure safety. Grument used an example from Baker's article from New York Times: "... the rule of survival is never look anyone in the eye." Baker used people in New York as an example and said "... there are a million people on every street corner and not one of them will give you so much at a glance. Those million people are not being coldblooded. Just surviving." When I traveled to the USA with my mom first time during my childhood, we accidently took a wrong bus which led us to a real ghetto area. In retrospect, it was such an intimidating experience. There were all black people all around us and they kept looking at us. My mom told me not to look or stare at people there. We attempted to avoid an eye contact to assure of our safety.
Grumet also noted that there is a difference between staring and looking, mainly staring is not a response to another person's behavior as looking is. Staring is something that the receiver cannot ignore. When I walk through the underground at WLC, people often stare at me. I have no idea whether it is because of my ethnicity or how I dress. Somehow, people just stare at me. It actually makes me really uncomfortable, so I respond by walking without making eye contact and looking at something, other than the person.
The article also describes that a feature of eye contact is the ability to transmit instant and meaningful information to the receiver. One function of eye contatct mentioned by Grumet is to convey menace. This type of eye communication is very effective in many situations such as on football field, in a debate, etc.
Eye contact also plays an important role as an indication of how in love a couple is. The article says that the more they look into each other's eyes, the more in love they seem to be. I don't think that it is possible to love someone and not to share a great deal of eye contact with him or her. Eye acts as an indication of the person's emotion. When you love someone else and want to express the feeling toward the person, what would you do? I think most o us would utilize the power of eye contact.
Grumet also explains that relationship between interpersonal communication and eye contact: "Eye contact is an essential avenue in the quest for comprehension." Lacking eye contact has something to do with an effective communication. When the conversation that is lacking eye contact, it is considered as ineffective. I think it is interesting that women generally give more eye contact than men in conversations. According to the article, "Women looked at their partners 94% of the time while they were listening, and men, 82% of the time." This statement really applies to me. In many situations, I believe that eye contact is really important, especially in interpersonal communication. Since one of my strengths is sympathy, I personally often exploits the power of eye contact - "eyes are the windows to the soul." In the article, Grumet also emphasized the importance of eye contact in interpersonal communication. Apparently, lacking eye contact makes people feel that they are less fully participating in conversations.
I also found the cultural factor function interesting. It is known that many nonverbal behaviors communicate different things to people in different countries. Eye contact is one of the important means of nonverbal communication. Grumet said that staring is not appropriate for certain groups like Japanese and Americans but intense eye contact is an acceptable behavior for Arabs and Greeks. It is interesting to know that the intense eye contact is considered as a sign of sincerity in those countries. When I read this part of an article, I thought about eye contact culture in my country, Japan. I believe that Japanese people do not really appreciate too direct eye contact. Japanese don't necessary look at their eyes all the time while they are talking. Even Japanese do make direct eye contact depending on situations, direct eye contact is just not accustomed for Japanese in daily life. It is just uncomfortable because, in Japan, we are suppose to look away or down at some point I remember when I came to the state first time, I often felt weird and uncomfortable because people just looking at my eyes whole time while I was talking. It is not considered as rude but it's just weird. In addition, I observed two American guys having conversations at the Starbucks while I was writing this assignment. It was really fascinating because they just kept looking at their eyes each other almost whole time while they were talking, even every time they had a sip of coffee.