Poker players know that the eyes never lie. Indeed your eyes almost always signal your intentions for the simple reason that you have to see what you intend to do.
This is an essential difference between communication with eye movement/eye contact and other forms of communication. The connection between what you know and what you say is entirely your choice and of course you will always use this freedom to your advantage. But what you are looking at and where your eyes move are inevitably linked.
Naturally your friends and enemies have learned, indeed evolved to exploit this connection. Even the tiniest changes in your gaze are detectable. As an example, think of the strange feeling of having a conversation with someone who has a lazy eye.
Given that Mother Nature reveals such a strong evolutionary advantage for reading another’s gaze the question then arises why we have not evolved to mask it from those who would take advantage? The answer must be that it would in fact not be to our advantage.
With any form of communication, sometimes you want to be truthful and other times you want to deceive. The physical link between your attention and your gaze means that, for this particular form of communication you can’t have it both ways. Outright deception being impossible, at best Nature could hide our gaze altogether, say by uniformly coloring the entire eye.
But she chose not to. By Nature’s revealed preference, this particular form of honesty is evolutionarily advantageous, at least on average.
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11 comments
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October 6, 2010 at 8:57 am
Barbara O'Brien
Jeff,
I just have a quick question for you but couldn’t find an email so had to resort to this. I am a progressive blogger. Please email me back at barbaraobrien@maacenter.org when you get a chance. Thanks.
B
June 10, 2013 at 5:05 am
Elisangela
Hi HazelSorry for the delay in getting back to you. With coilrecmams the period of time it takes to make a decision is down to the client (Mr Heineken, Mr Nike whoever). This is usually linked to when the shoot date is. I have confirmed people on jobs the night before the shoot and even on the day of the shoot, but usually you should know a few days before (wardrobe call etc). So its a how long is a piece of string’ scenario i’m afraid, there is no set time. Best thing to do is email me the link to your clips and ill let you know if I think their damaging or not.Email to
October 6, 2010 at 9:46 am
samson
How could we see something with our gaze being cast in its direction? Enhanced peripheral vision, or a mobile fovea? Perhaps the adaptation necessary to hide one’s gaze, conditional on the evolution of our eye, is much too complex or costly to evolve. Then it is possible that masking would be an evolutionary advantage but there’s no way simple adaptation that would work, and so we are stuck with wearing aviators.
June 12, 2013 at 7:35 am
Abran
that we should fogirve and forget’. Even if this were actually possible, we are certainly not required to even attempt anything like it if they are unrepentent and likely to offend again on the same serious way. We are entitled to say within ourselves something like: whilst I have handed calling you to account over to God, and whilst I pray that you will see the light, understand what you have done and repent, and apologise so that we can safely be reconciled, I now know you and what you are like, and I choose to guard my heart and the hearts of those under my protection, and (for the time being anyway) to love you in absence.By doing this, as well as protecting ourselves (we are not called to continually cast our pearls in front of swine’) and giving ourselves time and space for our own healing, we give those who have done us wrong the chance to experience that we no longer seek their company, but at the same do not carry any resentment towards them. If it is God’s will that we should be reconciled to them and resume an active friendship, then this course of action can have a powerfully positive challenging effect. If it does not, then it is better that we let them go and enable God to give us something/someone else instead.We hope you find this reply of help.God bless and guide you.
October 6, 2010 at 12:27 pm
Lyle_S
Evolution is driven on survival. Good lying isn’t necessary to survive so, to Samson’s point, the cost isn’t worth the benefit.
October 6, 2010 at 9:24 pm
itovertakesme
This eyes story is an interesting evolutionary signaling example that I never thought about. Having “honest eyes” is probably useful in mate selection (“hey who were you looking at?”) but also in caring for children, since it could potentially help parents understand what children are truly interested in.
One way “honest eyes” can be partially faked though is through peripheral vision. Peripheral vision does not develop until early adulthood, which may favor the child-raising theory of honest eyes, but my guess is peripheral vision is more about avoiding adulthood dangers than being able to keep track of where the prettier girl is while maintaining eye contact with the girl you started talking to first.
People can also choose “unknown eyes” by wearing sunglasses, but as theory would predict (at least at the first-order level), it’s often the creepy guys that wear them. Is that true in equilibrium?
I think a related evolutionary game that happens is communicating/discerning emotions. There are advantages is convincing the other player that you have honestly communicated your emotions. There are also advantages in being able to decipher true emotions. Hence there is this game where early players (e.g. infants) use the obvious ones like smiling/crying, but as they become more experienced players they learn to fake these. Yet parents can see past them by looking for more subtle indicators that the children haven’t learned how to fake yet. People often rely on eyes to detect true emotions. (“After Mom shot herself, Dad never smiled with his eyes anymore”). So what is the equilibrium of this game? The poker face. Why? I think our faces move in so many complicated, almost sub-conscious ways that it is much easier to find a tell than discern what “tell” the other person is relying on and deceive them with it. Perhaps our complicated sub-conscious facial movements are another commitment nature has made to honesty. If someone had a face with only very simple expressions they may be good at poker but more difficult to trust in more evolution-important situations like dating. So, similar story to the eyes.
October 11, 2010 at 12:58 pm
jeff
Thanks for the thoughtful comment
October 9, 2010 at 4:02 am
Robert Wiblin
Interesting idea, but it’s also possible that there is no way to obscure where your pupils are directed that doesn’t interfere with your vision to an unacceptable degree. We clearly know how to be furtive with our vision when required.
October 9, 2010 at 4:26 am
Robert Wiblin
Though you could make the eye one colour, I expect movements of the ball would still reveal where one was looking without a major redesign.
October 19, 2010 at 9:40 am
Bill Petti
Jeff,
I would agree that physical signals are essentially costly signals that allow for honest , credible communication. Some physical signals could be considered screening devices given the relative inability to manipulate them.
However, from an evolutionary perspective eye movement is inefficient. Accurately reading eyes is extremely difficult–think about the difficulty around reading micro-expressions generally. Sure, poker players and law enforcement officials may have mastered the art, but even then I would imagine the accuracy rate is not that high. If nature favors honest expression of intentions, etc, I would imagine a more robust signal should have been selected for–one that is easier for an audience to accurately read.
May 9, 2012 at 1:36 pm
An Experiment I’d Like To See « Cheap Talk
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