Being able to read other people’s eyes is a very useful skill. it will let you know if someone is lying, how interested someone is with what you are saying, and the type of thought that a person is having. Understanding eye movements can even be quite profitable, especially when playing poker or selling things. Professional poker players are especially keen at reading other’s eyes and many wear sunglasses so as not to reveal anything about their own cards.
Like most behavīor your eyes follow predictable patterns, so here is the rundown.
Eye contact. Consistent eye contact is a sign that the person is interested in the conversation. Prolonged eye contact can mean that the person is trying to intimidate and/or may not trust you. Brief eye contact indicates that the person is anxious and/or not interested in the conversation. While a total lack of eye contact shows great disinterest in the conversation.
Eyes looking straight up. Rolling the eyes upward is a gesture that often indicates contempt, sarcasm, boredom, or annoyance. If someone is rolling their eyes at you it is not a good sign. Sometimes people look straight upward when they are referring to a god, but in most cases it is meant to be condescending. If their eyes roll back into their head and stay there… heh… make sure they aren’t having a seizure.
Eyes to the Upper Right. Someone who you see looking up-right (up-left from a 1st person point of view) is visualizing a remembered image. Ask someone to tell you the color of their car or describe what someone looks like and they should look up-right.
Eyes to the Upper Left. When you see someones eyes move quickly up-left (1st person top-right) they are constructing images in their head. A person looking up-left is using their imagination to put a picture together in their mind. Ask a person to imagine a large blue house filled with marbles and they should look up and to the left.
Eyes to the Right. When someone moves their eyes to the right (1st person left) they are recalling sounds from their memory. Ask someone to remember the melody to a song or to remember the sound of their alarm clock and they will look to their right.
Eyes Left. People construct sounds when they look to the left (1st person right). When someone imagines new sounds like an unheard voice, or puts together a new melody they look to the left. Ask someone to imagine the sound of a car horn underwater and they should look to the left.
Eyes Down and Right. A person looking down-right has internal dialog going on in their head. They may talking to themselves, reciting a conversation, or thinking about what they are going to say. Ask someone how their last conversation went and you will see them looking down-right.
Eyes Down and Left. If a person looks down-left they are thinking about how something makes them feel. If they are visibly happy then they may be thinking about the happiness that they feel. Ask a person how they feel on their birthday and they should look down-left before they describe it to you.
Eyes Straight Downward. A person looking straight downward is showing that they are submissive and uncomfortable. People will often look downward when they are shy and do not wish to have a conversation. Moving the eyes straight downward is often a sign of shame or embarrassment. In some Asian cultures it is customary to look downward and not make eye contact when talking to someone.
Some People Are Switched Between Left and Right.
The majority of people follow these basic patterns just as most people are right-handed. However there are people who are “lefties” and with these people the left and right are reversed. So these people will look up-left when recalling visual information and down-right when thinking about emotions.
How To Tell If Someone Is Lying.
There is a lot of false information out there about how to read people’s eyes to tell if they are lying. So I’m going to make it easy for you.
Talk to the person, and watch how their eyes move. This will resolve the left-right reversal issue and give you a pretty good baseline for how they will behave in the future.
Simple questions are also good. “What color is your car?” is great because their eyes should almost always move up-right and it can also be easily verified. Now that we have a baseline we can tell when they are lying.
The surest sign that someone is lying is when the behavīor of their eyes changes from when they are telling the truth.
For instance your friend may look right when telling you about what he remembered in class and constantly look up-right when telling you about his last vacation. However, when he tells you about the hot girl that he met the other day his eyes move up-left. You can conclude that he’s lying about the girl.
There are also a lot of people that have trained themselves to maintain eye contact while they are lying. They have learned to do this because a lot of people actually believe these liars when they maintain this eye contact. (How could I lie to you while looking you in the eyes?)
For instance, your friend always looks up-right while telling you about facts and he now looks up-right while telling you about his job. So you ask him how much money he makes and he tells you this outrageous amount while looking you right in the eyes. You can conclude he is telling a lie.
There are some more tricks to reading peoples eyes and I’m going to save it for a later post… until then good luck spotting liars.
