Bodylanguage - Eyes

Eyes or "windows to the soul" as gypsies referred to them can reveal our fears, desires, attitudes, sincerity and many other elements that we often cant or wont communicate through words and actions alone.

Verbal communication, which includes rhythm, pitch and tone as well as the actual words we use, only accounts for about 20 to 30% of our total communication efforts. This leaves a pretty hefty chunk of the communication up to body language. More interesting is the fact that people only make eye contact about 20% of the time. So what are our eyes doing for the remaining 80%? The answer: a volley of movement as we switch in and out of different modes of information recall (recalling past experiences) and construction (creating new information from previous experiences).

According to the experts whenever we look to the left we are recalling information and to the right we construct. Something that must be taken into account is the fact that a small percentage of usually left-handed people are wired in the opposite way. Psychologists will often perform some kind of calibration before examining a client by asking leading questions to learn how their eyes behave.

Try the following: Ask yourself what colour your car is and take notice which direction your eyes are looking.

Up: Looking up (whether to the left or right) is the visual area. E.g. remembering car colours (up-left) or making them up (up-right).

When we recall visual information we look diagonally up to the left. On the other hand, when we look up to the right we are constructing visual information. Both visual and auditory construction have often been mislabeled as lying; this is only half true. Up to the right indicates they're making things up but does not mean lying necessarily as they may be guessing or confused and not actually intending to deceive. Looking directly right means possibly constructing sentences - ie telling the truth but not sure how to word it. As you can see lying is not as black and white as someone just looking diagonally up right or directly right.

It has more recently been discovered that people close their eyes briefly before giving a false answer.

There is also a small percentage of people with what is called the thousand-mile stare. These people look like they are looking right through you when communicating but actually require very little eye movement when retrieving or constructing information.

Middle: Looking directly left or right is the auditory area. E.g. remembering what was said (left) or making a new sentence (right).

Down: Looking down left and right is the kinesthetic or feeling and emotion area. Feelings and emotions are expressed when a person looks down diagonally right. Diagonally down left is internal dialogue. You may recall when Buzz Light-year realized he was only a toy how he looked down searching his feelings.

Confident people usually make more frequent eye contact when communicating. Nervous and surprised people can be wide eyed while untrustworthy and defensive people will often squint and dart their eyes from left to right. Open and warm communicators may also appear to be wide eyed which can also be a sign of intelligence or attentive listening. Open communicators will also make use of smiling eyes. In contrast an angry person may stare with squinted eyes for an uncomfortable length of time.

Is he/she interested in me? Ever had someone look you up and down? When the opposite sex, an employer or enemy first approaches you they may look you up and down to size you up. Men will also often glance at a woman's breasts when communicating, hmmm the statistics on that would be interesting to see.

As you can see there is a great deal of information being communicated through this window to the soul and a good understanding of eye-movement is an invaluable tool for the character-animator. While body language can be difficult to interpret it is vital to communication and can weigh more heavily than words.