Re:Eye Contact: How Long Is Too Long?
by sleazebreeze on Monday December 28, 2015 @10:12PM
(#10804961)
Thanks for the links, I'm reading them now. I appreciate the informative correction to my previous post.
I confess I must have misread his points because many of the stories are about criminal interrogations (although there are plenty of business stories too). I just bought his other book Louder Than Words and I will be reading that looking for the charm/rapport aspect instead of "breaking".
This kind of analysis feels flawed because people from different cultures have different body language.
Re:Eye Contact: How Long Is Too Long?
by andrewflnr on Monday December 28, 2015 @11:52PM
(#10805274)
There are differences, but there are also some [near-]universals. Have you read the book?
Incorrect. The author is retired FBI Agent, Joe Navarro, [0] an expert on reading and interpreting non-verbal body language. One of the cornerstone of non-verbals, explained in WEBIS, is the comfort/discomfort paradigm. [1],[2]
Is a person comfortable? Why not? Is there a mismatch between verbal communication and non-verbal actions? This is where rapport comes in, the ability to make someone feel at ease and something taught by the FBI when interviewing. They don't "break" people, they charm them by putting them at ease, let them drop their guard and inquire further. The earth shattering point of WEBIS is everybody exhibits these body language responses and I consider it to be a sort of human response API regardless of country, age or sex.
As for eye contact. Hold too little contact and you appear submissive. Too much and you may be signalling to another person you are aggressive.
[0] backgrounder by Octavio Blanco "This former FBI spy hunter fled Cuba at age 9" ~ http://money.cnn.com/2015/10/27/news/economy/joe-navarro-cub...
[1] Navarro, 2007.
[2] read Charles Fifield, "Setting the Sale Through Persuasive Communication" http://www.baylor.edu/business/kellercenter/news.php?action=...