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Eye Contact Will Influence Man-Machine Interaction
atari_kid writes "ScienceDaily is running a story about a researcher findings on the importance of eye contact in group communications. More importantly, the findings show how the amount of eye contact one receives in a group will effect the number of turns one can take in a discussion. What is interesting about the study his how it will effect the design of the future communication devices, like for example: 'Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVEs) which support communication between people and machines.' The research findings will be also used to facilitate user interactions with devices like PDA's and cell phones. I wonder if the findings could explain why the 'beautiful people' have such influence on the mass media."
Does this mean Xeyes will actually have a useful function?
It's the future of computing!
So this means that if I wanted to become really dominant in a conversation, I could bribe a couple of the participators to look at me once in a while, and rarely at my "opponent"? Hmmm suddenly I realize that a sales team should never ever consist of under ten people...
I am a rehabilitation/social worker for the blind and visually impaired... a great percentage of the world population has eye conditions, in which eye contact is difficult as a result of poor focus, strabismus, to name a few. When communicating with someone who is visually impaired, many other key stimulus must be realized. A blind or visually impaired person may show body language suggesting their desire to speak, or simply wait-out, at which point, people usually listen to the quiet group member. I think that using eye-contact as a variable in online group meetings is an interesting idea, but many other considerations must be met.
A University of Chicago study in 1994 found that the quality of a woman's interaction with a group of males can be measured by the amount of eye contact with her breasts.
Phallic Symbols in LOTR
one study done on virtual teams that spent a long time interacting via the internet, and then brought together for a brief time period to interact spent most of their time just introducing themselves to each other.
apparently, interaction with each other is more than just talking to one another,(mail qualifies for that, or say video attachments on mails)
co(g)ito, ergo sum : I get screwed at school, so i must be alive.
the amount of eye contact one receives in a group will effect the number of turns one can take in a discussion
then Big breats => More eye contact => More turns?
Anyone who's read "how to win friends and infulence people" know you score points by paying attention - making eye contact is the first step in that.
I can't say it loud enough: DUH!!
Looking at someone makes him feel like he is important to you, and he will more likely be tempted to tell what he thinks.
But I believe that the 'look' of the person has something to do... you'll more likely find yourself staring in the eyes of a nice looking lady than in the eyes of a smelly over-weighted middle-aged man.
My two cents
Can you see me now? Good.
I've seen an applications where users had to interact with a software agent that used different 'gaze policies'.
It's really hard to take it serious that some piece of software is looking at you. Cause you know it isn't, at least not in the way humans do. Eye-contact is very important in human-humon interaction, but in human-machine interaction, I really don't see a point in it. Just my opinion..
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no, big breasts => less eye contact, surely...
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I wonder if the findings could explain why the 'beautiful people' have such influence on the mass media."
:)
No, they have this influence because your hormones tell you that if you pay attention, you might be allowed to mate with the alpha male/female.
Sadly, they are wrong.
...ever see Blade Runner? Coming soon! Brand new Voight-Kampf machines to use your eyes to test your emotional responses.
Only in slashdot are posts of solidarity modded at -1 Redundant, while posts of antagonism are modded as -1 Flamebait.
News flash: Eye contact is important to communication. The more you look at someone, the better you'll communicate. Why did someone waste time and money analyzing this? A better idea: analyze vision processes in a human/comp. two way communication experiment to better design man/machine interfaces.
Eye Contact will influence Man-machine interaction...lol, that should be obvious to the meanest intelligence.
I don't know how CowboyNeal could even infer that from the article, but its wrong anyway! Beautiful people do not have any influence with the mass media. Famous people, on the other hand, might. I would not include Barbra Streisand, or Arnold Schwarzenegger in my list of beautiful people, but when they say something, the media listens. And the media listens, because, like it or not, the mass population wants to hear what they say. If people didn't want to know, the media would stop broadcasting it.
Wondering if this study could shape some ideas in driving Video Conferencing technology - I know from my experiences the most offputting aspect of participating in VCs is people not looking at you while talking, due to the locations of monitors and cameras not synching.
As an aside, why was the link from the main page to the ScienceDaily web site, when the article clearly has a link to the original from Queens University ????
The notion, however, that human computer interaction becomes better by mimicking human to human interaction seems ridiculous. Computers are tools. I no more want to engage in social eye contact with a computer than I want to with my drill, my car, or my vacuum cleaner.
Eye contact is used to regulate attention in social situations--a precious commodity among humans. But when it comes to tools and appliances, I expect them to pay full attention to me all the time, but to respond only when spoken to. None of that involves eye contact.
Beautiful people are in thge mass media in order to make all the normal people (i.e. people can't spend all day in the gym working on their abs and getting plastic surgery) to make the normal people feel inferior or inadaquate so that they consume things t feel accepted.
"Oh i'm so fat! i better by these designer clothes so i feel attractive"
"Oh darn if i want to be accepted by my peers i better buy these tommy "the sweatshop" hilfiger jeans!"
As long as the masses stay scared and insecure about themselves they will consume in an attempt to raise their social status.
When you actually talk to any of the "beautiful people" they are usually super lame and phony. One does not stay abreast of the latest trendy bull the corps are marketing by being anything but a transparent phony.
Say it aint so, Joe! Say it aint so!
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I wonder about how cultural differences in eye contact would affect this kind of study. I can't imagine that in many parts of Asia, where eye contact is rude in many contexts, that the results would be the same.
I need a software to improve my eye contact performance!
Even though his method is much more effective than eye contact, it is rarely used today.
this link was not mentioned in the posting http://hml.queensu.ca/, although some of his more recent work is not on the site
Seems like a recipe for keeping meetings productive. Make lots of eye contact with the people who are most likely to affect the meeting outcome you desire. For me, this is usually making the meeting end quickly.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
incorectly identifiying cause and efect,
the more looks you get, the more you feal it is
your turn, hte more you try and push your influence over others..
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Just one step closer to the mark of the beast technology.
this is a prime example of what i'm sure was a lot of money going to find out something we already knew. just thinking about communication leads you to believe that eyecontact helps. not to mention that these kind of studies have been done before (the ones to find out how eye contact helps). its just good to see that researchers are still good at snowballing the money givers.
it reminds me of a snippet on one of the news shows a few years back where the government actually dolled out money to see how fast heinz ketchup moved down a ramp.
quality research!
needing to get out of the lab more. They tend to get myopic. They can't see past the walls and they take their study subjects and culture as universal truths.
Sometimes this leads to problems down the road when any schlub on the street could have told them the problem right off the bat.
I'd say these lab boys need to go out and make some eye contact with people.
KFG
Shouts outs to Jeff, Alex, Ryan, Changuk, Roel, and Edwin!
It is lucky that our URL does not appear in the body of the article or the cube would have been slashdotted! :-)
already obey my every whim when I interact with them. They are my virtual comunications slaves.
Why, I can literally * push their buttons* and they respond as I will, when I will them too.
Frankly I find the idea of having to make "eye contact" with an inanimate object kind of creepy.
I can just see it now, I've made "eye contact" with a sweet young thing, she turns out to be compliant, we handshake, interface and we're just about to get to the good parts involving "sockets" when she "makes eye contact" ( today's catch phrase for "look at") with me and says:
"Not in front of the phone. I can't do it with someone watching."
KFG
This guy should look into the futures traders in the Chicago pits. One of the ways they know who is trading with someone across the room and surrounded by others, is through eye contact. The few I have met have said that they just get really good at telling if you are looking at them or the guy right behind them.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
Did it ever occur to these researchers that maybe the reason someone receives 'eye time' because they are already established as the dominant participant in the exchange? It could be from physical appearance, (perceived) intelligence and expertise in the subject at hand, etc. etc. It just seems like they are missing the point, and mixing up cause and effect.
So, when are they gonna build the first robot who takes notice of eye contact?
Man: Robot! Clean my dishes.
Robot: My function is not cleaning, master.
Man: Oh! Mr. Robot is too important for cleaning now! *rolls eyes*
Robot: Must.. kill... humans...
I can't wait till I get a new laptop and every morning I hear...
You lookin' at me!? Are YOU lookin' at ME?!!
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
People are stupid. Large groups of people are stupider. Large groups of stupid people fueled by passive entertainment with beautiful people are stupidest. Its a tiered approach...
"What can a thoughtful man hope for mankind on Earth, given the experience of the past million years? Nothing." -Bokonon
"They say you should make eye contact with a woman you're interested in. Well, there's a fine line between eye contact and the piercing stare of a psychopath."
Scientists discover eye contact! News at eleven!
Nerds on Slashdot given another opportunity to wallow in self-pity by railing against the "beautiful people"!
Eye contact is highly cultural: direct eye contact has different meanings to different people. In Europe and America it signifies attentiveness and interest, but elsewhere it can mean aggression and disrespect --
This kind of research is important in developing better computer interface, and human communication tools, but these tools need to adapt to many styles and codes of communication, as well.
VOS/Interreality project: www.interreality.org
Do people still make eye contact?
In some areas, eye contact is considered threatening. In others, it is considered a show of sincerity and honesty.
I come from an area where eye contact is good, and unfortunately I think I am living in an area where it makes people uncomfortable. In turn, it is uncomfortable for me when I make people uncomfortable.
It would be interesting to see a study on personality types versus eye contact and geographic area vs. eye contact and how to deal with differences in perceptions of eye contact. This would help me feel more comfortable in daily life and from what I gather would help a lot of others, too.
Any interesting sources anyone can point to?
That word--I don't think it means what you think it means.
Consequences ensue.
Hehehehe. This reminds me of a little experiment done to our social psych professor. It demonstrates the power of attention, but also shaping (gradual conditioning) in a rather insidious form.
The class had been studying shaping -- where you don't condition for an end behaviour but for an intermediate, easier one. Then when you have that, you shape to the next behaviour in a chain, repeating as necessary. That way, you can condition complicated behaviours that would occur too infrequently by chance to reward the pattern.
The idea was to pay our prof more or less attention the more or less he did a specific behaviour, and we chose teaching from one side of the stage rather than the other (in this case, reinforcing stage left, our right). Was probably good that only about 20 people were in on it, otherwise it might have been too obvious. But when he'd wander to our left, we'd stare at our books, scratch our heads, frown, slouch, and never make eye contact. If he moved to our right, we'd sit up a little straighter, look at him, and basically show we were paying attention. Well, if you ever have a glance around a sizable class, you know there are seldom many people giving their complete attention anyway, unless the prof is riveting. It only took a few classes to have him spending most of his time to the right of the lectern. We kept this up for nearly a month, at which point he basically taught the class from a window sill on the right edge of the room. Most impressivly, he didn't know what was going on. Most likely he just felt "most comfortable" there. Hehehehehehe.
People love to slag psychology but everyone acknowledges the importance of things like "eye contact." It's time we started giving these things some credit. Like the previous poster noting the power a "team of salespeople" could have, this can be powerful stuff.
Thanks to everyone making such a big deal about eye contact, I *REALLY* suck at interviews what with my curses of congenital nystagmus + lazy eye. Too bad people can't get hired for their technical skills and non-eye contact related communications skills rather than how much eye contact they have with an interviewer. Now if the interviewer was a computer or robot or something that might be a different story. Anyway, people (mainly job interviewers) need to realize that not everyone can look people straight in the eye for extended periods of time and that just because they don't/can't it doesn't mean they're dishonest/uninterested/whatever.
Personally, I avoid talking on the phone because of the unpersonal communication in a human familiar form. I can't help but feel like I am talking to an appliance and feel stupid. Partly because of the awkwardness of the fact that speaking with my voice is a personal form of communication over an unpersonal medium, there is some loss of emotional interaction.
On the other hand, I have no trouble communicating over mediums like IRC, Instant Messaging, email, etc... or in person.
Eye contact may help someone like me, but doubtfully... to me it would just be a device with a face. Based on what I see when i'm out or driving is that the majority of the people who are talking on a cell phone are perfectly content with "talking to themselves" as I always put it because it is essentially what they are doing. I especially get a kick out of seeing people walk around with those headsets, clearly advertising themselves as too self-involved to be bothered with distracting themselves with cell phones but willing to make themselves look like fools talking to themselves.
Slashdot is my favorite site. It has the best content. That said, I often cringe while reading this site, because the language skills of many techies are borderline-retarded. Not a week goes by that I don't see a story--not a post, but a story--on Slashdot which uses 'effect' for 'affect' or vice-versa. I can easily picture an army of Jeff K's out there: "I am teh computar mastar! I am very smart persan!"
It's really kinda well known that "dinosaurs" are a pretty disparate group of creatures, and that some prehistoric reptiles weren't really dinosaurs (like ancient crocodiles). The fact that we can't completely trace lineage of birds doesn't mean that birds did not evolve from a poorly documented group. Even if it is proven that birds did not evolve from dinosaurs, the proven ancestor, if any, will still be a "dinosaur" to most people.
Oh, and a couple more shout-outs to Mr. Peepers and Dr. Zaius!
This is interesting but what about the fact that in diffent cultures eye contact is considered rude or a chalange of ones authority?
Will the software have some sort of flag that would reverse the values if the user happens to be japanese or certian native american tribes?
Also what about people who are shy or have low self esteem. They would become electronic outcasts just as in real life.
Both times it should be "affect" rather than "effect."
...are more suitable for technical and business discussions -- you still can have a populartiy-contest atmosphere on IRC, but it won't depend on people's habits of moving their eyes and other irrelevant and easy to skew by minor external factors and individual peculiarities things.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
This reminds me of that old "n% of communication is nonverbal", business (usually quoted as 90%+, though I think the percentile usage is a bit pretentious). For most topics, I don't mind the phone, because at least I get voice inflection. For important contacts, though, or when I'm not sure of my footing (usually opposite-sex stuff) I want to be able to read facial expressions. And email?! Oh, don't ever try to work out a disagreement with your sig other over email if you can help it. Disastrous potential for misunderstandings.
I've sworn at computers for years. Now I can stare them down, too.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
Another interesting tidbit about Kruschev is the mistranslation of the phrase "We will bury you". (Another popular misconception is that he said this during the shoe-banging incident)
A more accurate translation would have been something like "we will be at your burial" with the more passive meaning that communism will outlast democracy, not the active meaning, suggested by 'bury', that they planned to kill us.
My source for this was my Russian professor in college but I just also found some colloborating evidence in this paper about the difficulties of translation.
Parent is correct but forgot to include the URL:
m
http://www.snopes.com/college/pranks/trained.ht
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