"Wait until you see the
whites of their eyes!"
…is the iconic battle cry of the Commander under siege as the attackers come in
mass upon the fort, circle of wagons or up the hill towards his men. Strangely,
the large whites of the eyes in humans, where designed to help us cooperate.
Recent research at Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
discovered that unlike chimps and apes who look at head movement, children
pay more attention to eye movement. Why?
Apes and chimps do not have those bright whites around their
pupils and that makes it hard for other apes and chimps to see
where they are looking and thus predict their next move. They
have to look at more obvious head movements instead.
Anthropologist Brain Hare says primates who do not have
bright whites can hide where they are looking from others so
they can, "...eat it, mate it, or chase it," I am thinking the chasing might come
first, but I digress.
Humans however have evolved the bright whites of the eyes to contrast with our
baby blues Iris and dark pupils so we can easily see the direction of another
person's gaze. The theory is that the advantages of understanding and
cooperation received through mutual gaze outweigh a having a poker face. This is
particular useful to me as I am not a great poker player, but boy, can I read that
body language.
If you’re familiar with the NLP techniques of reading where your eyes scan to tell
what people are thinking and feeling you can see other advantages. If you can
easily see where people gaze, you can see what kind of information they are
accessing using the principals of NLP. Keep an eye out (no pun intended) for my
new Eye Scanning article. There will be a link to it in the April newsletter.
I love that we were designed to create mutual gaze. If you’re interested in the
whites of the eyes research pick up this month’s Scientific American Mind. This is
just another fun body language fact.